@soix, it’s all good. I did hear a significant improvement when I switched from my MA8900 internal DAC, connected to my Mac via USB, to the HiFi Rose. The Rose was a little glitchy so I returned it and bought the Pontus II 12th Anniversary DAC. The Pontus II connected to my Mac sounds every bit as good as the HiFi Rose. I have considered purchasing the Gaia DDC for the IS2 connection to see where that takes things.
Interesting video on cables
At the risk of opening up this can of worms again, my brother sent me this video. It’s incredibly interesting and goes some way to showing why cables matter and that all cables are not equal. These are USB cables but I’m sure the principle applies to speaker and IC cabling.
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Nice DAC! I think that’s a great thought but not sure you need to go all the way to the Gaia. You could pick up a used Iris for $400 (that’s what I did) just to dip your toe in the water and can just turn around and sell it if you don’t get a meaningful performance bump. That was my plan, but after hearing it my Iris ain’t going anywhere. @vthokie83 did the same thing and he also has a Pontus ll and maybe he’ll chime in here with his impressions that were basically identical to mine. There’s also a Hermes available for $750 if you wanna kick it up a notch and/or can use the SPDIF input in addition to USB. Anyway, here they are just fyi… https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/650042588-denafrips-iris-usb-digital-to-digital-converter/ https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/650042607-denafrips-hermes-digital-to-digital-converter/ Again, FWIW. |
@soix I love the Pontus, it is a great DAC.Thanks for the links and advice. I was thinking I needed to go middle of the lineup for the DDC since the Pontus is kind of in the middle but good to know the Iris might be worth checking out, especially at around $400. |
Ha! I just looked at the Denafrips DDC lineup and i meant to say Hermes not Gaia. @soix your link sorted that mistake out thanks! |
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