dacs that I have had in my system - a listing

@jjss49; Thanks for the post and information, very useful :-)

Wow

amazing list

I'd be curious to hear your impressions of the Van Alstine dacs. I've been wanting to experience one of their more recent offerings in my system at some point.   Given your predilection for dacs with good output stages and attenuation, I was surprised not to see their Digital Preamplifier on the list

Thanks

JS

I’d be curious to hear your impressions of the Van Alstine dacs. I’ve been wanting to experience one of their more recent offerings in my system at some point. Given your predilection for dacs with good output stages and attenuation, I was surprised not to see their Digital Preamplifier on the list

i really enjoy frank’s dacs... especially his older tubed output ones with have a lovely voicing and allow tube rolling

i haven’t tried his newer ones without tubes, using the akm chip, and yes you raise a good point about his digital pre, it is ’on the list’ to try eventually

What are you thoughts on the internal H590 DAC as compared to the standalone DACs you’ve tried? From your system page, it seems like you have quite a speaker collection as well. Did you find the H590 a good match for the Harbeth?

internal dac is quite good on the 390/590 -- they lean on the clear/clean side but with a good degree of saturation through the mids and very good imaging

hegels are an excellent match for the harbeths, with their even tonality and remarkable low end grip

How many hours do you actually listen to each DAC, with that kind of turnover?

back in the covid shut in days, i literally had pretty much all waking hours each day to listen ... at that time being newly retired from daily work... in the past year+, it is less of course with our return to normal activities, but still plenty... i am not a big tv watcher (mostly sports), prefer to read/listen in the evenings

dacs are set up in a/b and even a/b/c configuration, easily switchable to allow comparison when needed

Have you ever considered taking a break and trying something like the Technics SU-R1000 or SU-G700M2 which converts everything to PWM, using its own in-house conversion?

yes among the amp stack there is a lyngdorf 3400 which i believe works on the same concept as the technics units you mention, i should have added that one to the list

i don't view listening to various dacs a burden at all, it is part of the enjoyment ... there is some setup/connection overhead, then they are easy to swap, and when i listen to relax/enjoy, i can opt to a/b just for fun, or just leave it

That’s an amazing list of dacs @jjss49 holy cow! Thanks for sharing.

Did you have something close to a control reference system you used to evaluate most of these or did you change speakers and amps too in parallel at times?

The reason I ask is I’ve changed other things in my system at times that sometimes makes me want to go back and retry some dacs I had before.

[btw] I always wondered how some of Frank’s older dacs sounded, never heard one, you answered that too. I'm sort of into wanting to retry some of the older dacs again with other amp, speaker, tube changes I've made since. Thx.

Thanks for taking the time to share all this info for posterity and being willing to answer all the inevitable questions that will come !  Have you had a standard streamer to test them with or have your tried a bunch of those also?