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Gustard U18 with Gustard R26 dac?

Greetings.  

I've done some searching in the forum and I know there are people with the Gustard R26 dac and/or the U18.  I currently have a R26 dac and I'm quite happy with it.  I'm just wondering if I might get a bit of improvement if I add a U18.

I'm using the R26 with an Innuos Zen Mk3 streamer via a Inakustik usb cable. 

If I add a U18, I've read that the I2s connection would be best. Questions that I have are:

- is this a worthwhile upgrade? I think the rest of my system is revealing enough. 

- will I need an expensive I2s cable? 

- does the I2s cable need to be really short? I can make it work if I rearrange my gear. 

Thank you for any input. 

sls883
sls883 OP
309 posts
 

Nice grammar (mine). Lol. 

soix
9,456 posts
 

Nice!  Love to hear your impressions once it settles in. 🤞🤞🤞 And hey, if everyone’s grammar here was anywhere near as good as yours this would be a much more user-friendly place. 🙄

sls883 OP
309 posts
 

@soix

I've done enough listening now to feel safe saying the U18 was a worthwhile addition.  It's added a bit of clarity/detail and realism to what already sounded quite good. No additional harshness.

This is with the $15 Monoprice hdmi cable. I have a DH Labs cable on order. 

soix
9,456 posts
 

Great!  Thanks for the follow up and very much look forward to your impressions of the DH Labs cable. 

sls883 OP
309 posts
 

@soix 

I do think there was a slight improvement with the DH Labs cable, but I was swapping out interconnects at the same time and haven't done any seriously listening with the two different HDMI cables.  I need to do that some time.

This is unrelated, but I got a new interconnect that I wanted to try with my SACD player.  I decided to a/b test the SACD play against my dac and streamer.  My son (a musician) and I both gave the edge to the SACD player. We both felt that something was off, so I checked the setting on the dac and the filter setting had somehow gotten changed from "fast" to "slow".  I changed it back to "fast" and we both felt that the edge now belonged to the dac/streamer.  Pretty interesting.  On the fast setting, you get more detail and bass is punchier.  Anyone listening to this dac on medium or slow is not getting the best performance out of it.

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