$100K system build - % breakdown of spend

for speakers check out the monitor audio platinum 200s or 300s Gen 2, for the dock check out the Wyred for sound 10th anniversary dac, one of the reviewers put it up against his VPI turntable with a $5,000 Japanese cartridge and he said the 10th anniversary dac sounded as analog, I now have the dac and I totally agree it’s the most analog dac that I’ve had in my system

…

How do they do the pops-n-clicks, and the poor channel separation. in the DAC? 😎
(And please don’t knee jerk a response, as I have a TT as well)

But really… how much should someone have to spend on a DAC to perform better than many turn tables?
(It seems like it should be an order of magnitude easier?)

But really… how much should someone have to spend on a DAC to perform better than many turn tables?

About $200

“How much do you have to spend on a DAC to perform better than many turntables.” Let me try and address that. Obviously it depends.

But the best way to look at it as your digital end versus analog end.

Digital end: Streamer (or Player), and DAC

Analog end: TT, cartridge, and phonostage

Twenty years ago digital could not touch analog at any price. But slowly digital has improved and the price differential has been dropping. At this point, for carefully chosen and synergistic components there is perhaps a small advantage to analog… say 10%. There is nothing exact about this… it is so highly dependent on every piece of equipment you own and the performance level of your system.

My system performs in, say the highest 10% of high end systems. My analog end cost around $35K and my digital $40K. The sound quality is equal. When the analog vs digital end get down to $5K… I’m not really sure what happens… but I suspect the analogue lead jumps ahead. So, you need to put a lot into the DAC and streamer. At this level, you’ll probably have to invest In $8K + to match the analog.

Obviously this is constantly changing as folks innovate and better sounding components and techniques become available to manufacturers. For instance the Schiit Yggdrasil is only ~$2.5K and performs like a number of DACs over $5K. But make no mistake about it… if the rest of your signal path is capable of resolving it… the $10K DAC will blow it away.

If you are interested in high end sound quality and choose good quality and synergistic components… you get what you pay for.

I usually make the rookie mistake of under playing amps… But these throw away slogans like:

If you are interested in high end sound quality and choose good quality and synergistic components… you get what you pay for.

Maketh me wonder

1. How do we identify quality?
2. What is synergy?
   1. Is it flaws being synergistic, or what is it?
   2. The room and speaker have synergy.
   3. The tonearm, and cartridge need synergy.
   4. What else?

If it was my 100k, I would start with a dedicated room.  It's by far the hardest thing to upgrade and will never be obsoleted.  It doesn't have to be away from the rest of the house.  However, ideally it's separate from your "TV" room.  If you have your wife's support (and are having the house built?), give her whatever it takes (exercise room? art studio? bedroom-size walk-in closet?)

As for the gear, I'm in the speakers first camp. Spend until you hurt on them.  The amp(s) have to play well with the speakers.  The digital market is advancing so rapidly that I'd suggest you spend more on the analog upgrade, figuring you'll upgrade the digital side multiple times before circling back around to analog.

Unless your new place has bad power, I wouldn't spend anywhere near 10k on cabling & power conditioning.