What the Best Dac have you heard or owned. How could you tell it was that good.

When I went to upgrade my dac I listened and demoed in my system as much as I could. After narrowing it down to the MSB Reference with separate power supply and the Nagra Tube Dac with separate power supply I ended up purchasing the Nagra. If your budget allows, I highly recommend a unit with a separate power supply.  You will notice a much cleaner sound with more quiet background in my opinion. Love them both but felt like the Nagra did a much better job of making the music uncolored and sounding like the actual instruments are in my room.

I have a Ladder Schumann r2r ladder dac I’m very fond of. It has a beautiful wide and deep soundstage, detailed yet never edgy. I bought it used and to me, best bargain in my system.

At this time I own a Berkeley Alpha Reference 2 MQA, Tubadour IV, Black Ice Glass FX Tube DAC, and a Marantz KI Ruby SACD player. Prior to that I have owned a PSA PerfectWave MK II, and a Resolution Audio Quantum.

I'm afraid that this won't be a very satisfactory answer but I can't really say that one DAC is clearly superior to another. You would think that the Berkeley Reference 2 ($20,000) would blow away the Black Ice ($800) but I've compared them several times and to my ears the differences are pretty small. I could easily live with the Black Ice and be happy. The Tubadour IV is very similar to the other two but there is something about the sound that I find relaxing.

To help put this in perspective, I can't hear the difference between interconnects either. I've tried numerous times and I even bought a pair of silver cables from Audioquest because so many people said they had a distinctive sound. I compared them using a control (two very similar sounding DACs) and I could not hear any difference at all between the silver cables and Blue Jeans cables.

People who report dramatic differences in DACs must have way better hearing, or have a much more resolving system than I do.

I haven’t spent a ton of money on DAC’s. So I know there’s really good ones above my price point. But I bought a Black Ice tube DAC at $900. Replaced the power chord with a Pine Tree iso-braid power cable, and the game changer for me was purchasing 2 NOS Amperex Bugle Boys (12ax7) for the output tubes. I’ve got the magic of tubes along with many other superlatives. I’m good for now! 

I have the WYRED4sound 10th anniversary DAC I bought it because one of the reviewers put it up against his VPI turntable with a $5,000 Japanese cartridge and he said the 10th anniversary DAC was every bit as analog, on that review I bought it and I wholeheartedly agree this is the most analog DAC I've had in my system, one of the other reviewers put it up against his$9,000 COS1 DAC and he said the 10th anniversary DAC was better and then he put it up against Bricasti, chord and other more expensive d a c s and he said the 10th anniversary DAC was better, and they also give you a 30-day trial period if you don't like it send it back and get your money back can't beat that, after you hear this one you won't be needing $30,000 DACS.