Built-in vs. Standalone DACs

I have had a Musician Aquarius for about a week and it’s just stupid good in my system! I put on an old Sepultura cd just for fun tonight to see what it would sound like. Old late 80s compressed metal album . Holy s..t did it sound good. Brought all the dynamics back out of that POS recording and all harshness went away. Just crazy! My 1st foray into a ladder dac but I have never heard a DS dac sound anything like this. It’s almost like you can feed it any damn thing and it makes it the best it possibly can be. Forget about slow and not detailed etc it’s all there in spades. No idea if it’s neutral but it’s natural as hell and makes EVERY DAMN thing sound like gold. 

I guess my point is there has been a shift happening in digital/dacs for the better. Hate to say it but probably mostly because of the Chinese dacs have caused the US and Europeans to up their game for the cost. To spend another 7 k for an internal one seems kind of silly if things keep progressing over the next few years. 

If you are on a journey for the very best sound quality, then you want separates. All high end companies build the very best they can into a single box solution… often two box solutions. Then they may combine.  Assaults at the high end are never boxes with lots of functions. For instance, my Audio Research Reference 160m monoblocks sound better than my Reference 160s stereo one box solution.

Multifunction boxes are those of compromise. There is a market for people that do not have the room or are more concerned with aesthetics. So as all the effort goes into single function components, it only makes sense to put them together and offer this to a less discriminating audience.

Of course, then most audiophiles work over decades to build better and better systems and so need to be able to make improve a single component at a time or the cost to upgrade becomes too large.

For me it was the flexibility of upgrading the DAC in the future. I brought a very highly rated DAC that back 5-6 years ago was considered state of the art in DAC's, it's probably a middle of the road one now. Some of the technologies they are using today were not even being used 5-6 years ago. It could be true that they have maxed out DAC technology, but I bet they are not anywhere near done. Take almost any audio equipment and look back 5-10 years. 

it really depends on the manufacturer we sell krel hegel and avik

all the dacs in these pieces are stellar the dac board in the krell is a 1k add on and you would have to spend 5k to beat it so the krell k300 i is just a steal for what itis 

the avik electronics are among the best we have heard and their built in dacs will blow away many really expensive dacs 

we just became dealers and their s180 streamer reminds me of an really good analog  playback system just amazing super liquid and involving 

probably the best sounding dac/streamer under 10k

so it really comes down to engineering prowess and intent

Dave and Troy

audio intellect NJ

krell,hegel and avik dealers

I have the Hegel H390 and the built in DAC is actually pretty good, but it’s no match for let’s say a Denafrips Pontus ll. Now they say the DAC in the H590 is even better, but I doubt it is better than the Pontus ll either.