there are reviews that compare the A26 with the R26. It all comes down to which sound you like. If you like the delta sigma sound then the A26 is nice. If you like the r2r sound the the R26 is nice. Both offer great sound and option for their price points. I know from first hand that the R26 responds very well to tweeks and upgrades to allow it to compete with dac’s in the $5000 and $6000 range. Will be interesting to see if the A26 returns the same results from the tweeks. Enjoy the music and ignore the noise from the trolls.
Gustard R26
Is anyone else looking forward to the reviews coming out on the Gustard R26 r2rDac? I am interested to see if it can compete with the Holo Spring at a lower price point. How will it stand up to the other r2r dac’s out there right now. It does present well and is feature rich right out of the box. Is it a true proprietary resistor board or is it off the shelf and tweaked? I know the other Gustard equipment is well received and liked so my hopes are high for this as well.
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SGreg you could be sort of right about the Gustard dac competing against dacs in the 5-6K my buddy with the Boulder 866 integrate and TeKton Moab speakers is happy with the Gustard for now , he bought the Gustard just to get him through a transition period until he made his mind up over integrates and possibly separate dac.
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I bought the Gustard A26 a couple weeks ago for one of my headphone setups. I wanted to see what all the hype is about.... For wifi I have good results with this basic bridge: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N5RCZQH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Anyway I thought it sounded very good and well built. Very punchy and good width of sound stage. Then I swapped for one of my Denafrips R2R DACs and realized I need to return the A26. R2R is so much more organic sounding and much better soundstage. I'll give the R26 a try instead to see how it compares. But Gustard did a good job with these. I like the style of the A26 better than the R26. Good value for what you pay for them. System matching is important but if you really want to compare the sound quality of DACs try listening to them thru a good headphone amp. It gives you a lot more detail that can be lost in room acoustics with speakers.
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One thing that I think can get lost in the discussion is all in cost. I have made the comment myself that this dac will compete with others costing $5000 to $6000. Truth be told the R26 costs $1600 US and then to squeeze out the performance we talk about the all in price is pushing $2600 to $3000. Guess what has to be assumed is the comparison to others that the same upstream mods are in play so a $5000 dac is pushing $6000 all in and $6000 dac is $7000 all in. Hope this does not trigger our lan troll. |
@sgreg1 yup in order for the comparison to be fair we have to assume a $5-10K DAC will need to be optimized to the same degree, and actually the extra cost is more like $1.5K in my setup. On another note, it is fascinating to me that the way in which the incoming digital signal is routed/clocked/converted/filtered/amplified inside the DAC is either obfuscated and/or misunderstood by me and most other folks who are into digital playback... why don't we demand to know what this process end-to-end looks like for each DAC PRIOR to purchase lol? Seems important info if one wishes to optimize one's source chain, no? |
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