He does change gears frequently.......but what he wants to sell in May...He wants to keep in June....That's His choice...not Ours. Facto.
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All these conflicting and opposite perceptions of these DACs (and some others) should give you a good idea that you will have to make the determination on your own with YOUR gear! You have NO idea what associated gear all these responders have and therefore NO idea how either DAC will sound in your system. Personally, I would buy used so you can move the one you don’t like along for about what you paid for it. |
@ronboco If you don’t understand or didn’t know that your gear plays a HUGE role in soundstage depth and width (regardless of the room) then you owe it to yourself to find a store or a fellow audiophile who can demonstrate the affect using different gear! The room only accentuates/increases the affect. |
makes me chuckle over my morning coffee what is the half-life of what is a ’current generation’ dac, or what is huff saying is the best, that he is using??? ... approximately 15 minutes... to select a dac for one’s own system based on these criteria is, well, not too wise 🤣😂 |
My system comprises only world-class components; the speaker system is 2 levels beyond a model that AV Showrooms and Enjoy the Music awarded Best of Show @ 2022 FLAX. I have heard the $100k dCS rack and also the $85k MSB rack. IMO HQ Player (about $300) w/settings defined by the author Miska (upscaling everything to DSD, Miska’s recommended modulator is mandatory/not optional) > DAC 200 defines current state of the art digital playback. Miska + T+A co-designed DAC 200’s proprietary true-1 bit DSD circuit, one of audio’s all-time best design teams. Note the above-described settings for HQ Player requires an advanced dedicated computer (not in the sound room.) I also employ a small NUC for renderer function next to DAC 200 in the sound room (an Intona isolator inserts in-between the NUC and DAC 200.) HQ Player and the NUC both employ only Miska’s unique OS, not Linux-based. It takes only about 20S to switch between DSD and PCM in the HQ Player menu (the menu allows -6 dB PCM setting to match DSD level.) Anyone who heard this AB test would permanently swear off PCM. In every potential aspect DSD upscaling just incinerates PCM even HR. IOW this rig allows you to enjoy state of the art performance with Red Book; you don’t need to rely on HR PCM. Yes, still, the original source recording quality defines ultimate performance but not the bit #/sample rate. If you own DAC 200 you won’t know its potential till you hear it with HQ Player with Miska’s recommended settings on a dedicated high-powered computer. If/when you read users who preferred PCM over DSD on HQ Player > DAC 200 I feel 100% confident they used settings other than what Miska recommended since DAC 200 arrived for sale. (Note that earlier using HQ Player > May Audio Spring 3 Level 3 DAC I too preferred PCM on about 66% of the music programs I compared to DSD. But that AB test is irrelevant to the AB test described above.) The payoff for the effort required to get the appropriate computer and settings for HQ Player as described is to know you shall likely never hear better digital playback. Considering how mediocre digital playback can be, that is a high-value reward. BTW, HQ Player has huge EQ and bi-amp potential for persons interested in those features. The reason people tend to burn through gear is because their room and its boundaries define audio performance more than any single component or combination of components. I suggest such persons hear something "different" with a new component, "different" temporarily appears "better," then the room signature finally makes itself known again, they swap in a new item, are temporarily infatuated with the new "different," rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Visit your local movie house and listen carefully to the bass, how it is absolutely seamlessly integrated into the whole experience and sound stage. (That gear there is dirt cheap compared to our gear.) Now go home and notice how utterly disconnected is bass from the rest of the music and the sound stage; some bass notes are gone while some bass notes are +9 dB. And your gear costs tons more than the theater gear (at least per watt.) This single difference comprises the single biggest difference between the sound of live music vs. reproduced, the effect of a small room's boundaries vs. a larger commercial space (a commercial space has bass modes but they are all sub-audible, below 20 Hz.) This difference comprises a bigger difference than any swapping of components above mid-fi level. Yes, you can hear component differences but the magnitude of bass mode effects exceeds differences between any component (you can't know or hear or understand this till you hear a small room that solved the bass mode problem.) And EQ can't fix these bass problems; it's impossible to fill in a 9 dB dip (1000x power boost) and smoothing a 6 dB bump degrades quality somewhere else in the sound room. |
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