Dark Horse DAC

op

the doge is old news, was dac of the month a few years back

sonically it is quite good sounding but despite all the tubes in the output section, the output stage and level was relatively weak in my experience and presented some background noise in use when turned up to feed adequate output if used directly into a power amp (which, with its remote and volume control, is something the unit purports to be able to do well)

Maybe old news for some, but perhaps not so much for others. Also, the current version is a MKII. Can't comment on the direct to amp performance, but the 2.6V going to the preamp through the RCA connections is higher than any other DAC that I know of.

@brauser

sure you can read posted specs all day... or you can own the unit and report experiences gained, which i just did

and yes i am sure the mk2 version will have it all fixed... 😉

hope you buy one, find out for yourself, and report back - my suggestion is to have a proper line stage at the ready to supply gain and impedance matching so the next stage receives suitable signal

WOW...tough crowd with Alot of First World issues...

Cograts @brauser on your purchase. I trust it will be all you hoped for...

The Doge tubes inherently have much higher noise then a SS devise now x8 that is substantial, what is lacking is a Abundance of Filtering kits noise floor and S/N is nothing special , I have head the mk2 several times with nos tubes, YesI pleasant but not real refined and get the low level detail and separation like dacs in the$5-6k range , Jays comments are far from accurate  having heard his reviews and often say how good a product is then 3 months later move on and loose favor 

typical of Newbe Audiophile. Myself in the field over 40 years, owned a Audio store and have very good access through multi state New England Audio contacts being within 3-4 hours of 5 states is  excellent ,  yes these are very good for the $$ but Donot put these up against $10 k products, MSB make some very good products but Waay over priced , theT+A 200 dac at $7k is the best dac I have  heard even against dacs at 2x the cost ,  the Holosprings KTE , or terminator+ are also very good ,Jay reviewed them and didnot compare the Doge to these dacs ,these are night and day better ,compare 🍎 to 🍎 in $$ to be fair.