Bottom line is both of the Sabre dac’s sound very, very much alike in comparison to the DAC 5 and unfortunately are nowhere near the realm of the AN dac. I somewhat regret spending the bit more for the Gustard but it is much easier to hook cables to and is balanced like my system. I fed the Gustard in NOS and internal OS, 24/384 from HQ Player and 16/44 straight. I have 14 tb of mucic, mostly SACD rips and the SACD was where the Sabres began to show promise but never gave the holographic air and soundstage that the DAC 5 did.
@dht4me , I would never expect the Audionote to sound remotely like the Topping or Gustard. Not even close. The Topping and Gustard are designed to replicate the waveform as accurately as possible and would do this with far more precision than the Audionote. With the Audionote, you are buying art. I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. The goals of the two are completely different.
Being pragmatic, the image should be confined between the speakers. That is all that is possible on the recording. What the Audionote creates is artificial. Again, I do not mean that disrespectfully, the goals are just different.
Depending on the room acoustics, and personal preference, I expect many would prefer the Gustard and Topping to the Audionote, just as many would prefer the Audionote. Again, being pragmatic, I expect the Gustard/Topping has, under critical listening a touch more detail, and again, under critical listening the imaging may be sharper, even if the image is not as wide. The Audionote, if like other Audionote DACs is unlikely to have a very flat response, rolling off in the lows and highs, hence why you would find the Gustard bass heavy in comparison, and in your system, that may not come across flabby, and ditto while the Gustard will come across brighter. If you don’t have a well treated room, rolling off the highs and lows can also increase the listening pleasure, and will improve what people call PRaT.
I will go out on a limb, and please don’t take it the wrong way, but I highly suspect that I could take out the caps, superreg, and upgraded input receiver and you would never know it unless I told you.