Back to the DAC

I agree that that source is the most important. However, when it comes to DACs I also feel it is the least important.  That is because for my money the laws of diminishing returns apply to DACs more than most components. 

I have a great local FM station and I have 3 tuners in 2 systems. The sonics are very good on all of them with 2 of them being modded vintage units.  The difference between those 2 and my Magnum Dynalab MD108T, which cost about $8k, is very large. It is not diminishing returns for my source tuners.

I only got 20+ hours on my new low cost Yggi+ OG DAC and the thing sounds great. I would need to go up very high in the cost scale to do better. Say $20k for a Playback Designs. I had a $15k DAC for a year and the OG is better. Point is that there can be great savings on the DAC. All the DACs discussed on this thread are more than capable performers. 

USB supposed to be the best input on the Yggi+. Ethernet is usually my least preferred on the DACs I have owned, especially when using something like a Sonore Optical Rendu streamer beats that easily.

I have used those DAC savings on my amps, and I found that there was a very big difference in performance. 

BTW - if one is interested in treatments without the treatments take a look at Mitch Barnetts offering for Convolution filters. Not sure if Aurrender supports it. Roon and JRiver support it.

Digital Room Calibration Services, Convolver, Headphone Filtersets (accuratesound.ca)

@yyzsantabarbara Once I take my acoustic panels down (and fix the walls) I was thinking about using the YouTube guy on Pursuit of Perfection who offer a Dirac service, but I'd much rather keep it closer to home. Maybe I'll check it out sometime, thanks.

Blanket statement? I’ll bet only 2% of these posters are able to test an Ethernet interface or an i2s interface. 
My Aurender is optimized for usb! If I had a $ for everytime I’ve heard that, I’d be rich. Years ago, I bought the top of the line Auralic over the Aurender and Lumin. And guess what, it was optimized for usb with femto clocks and that was feeding the best wyred 4 sound dac with the best aq diamond usb cable. I also had the gimmicks/tweaks like reclockers/etc that were optimized for usb.

I got rid of all that crap, got 1 of the best dacs available, used Ethernet, and the sound was much better, much much better.

Then a couple months ago bought the streamer with only an i2s and coax output so I can use i2s, another big improvement.

There is a reason the best dacs don’t have usb or have i2s and Ethernet interfaces.

Mitch is from Vancouver area, and he remotely did genius level work on my room in California. We needed to fix my Thiel CS3.7 first. I could hear 1 issue, but he identified so many others.

I tried to do the DSP myself after starting to read his book. I was smart enough to realize how dumb I am in that realm. Luckily, he started offering the remote service. I no longer use his filters in my office. I have ugly acoustic panels and I moved things around. I also have different speakers in the room so a new set of measurements would have been needed.

Accurate Sound Reproduction Using DSP: Barnett, Mitch: 9781520977904: Amazon.com: Books

The headphone folks are also big fans for Mitch.

I am curious as to how my Livingroom system would sound with Mitches fitters. I am going to try it out once I have taken care of other matters.