Better DAC or better Streamer

Spend $2k less and get the PBD lower end streamer which seems like the same as the Nagra. Mostly likely because Nagra licensed it from PBD.

A fibre cable did not sound the same with 2 of 3 fibre streamers that I had at the same time. The Lumin X1 and OpticalRendu were fibre optical, and the Playback Designs was SPDIF in my test (though it supported fibre). All were great but very different sounding.

Thank you Thank you Thank you for everyone input.  

How close is Hugo TT2 with Mscaler to the sound of DAVE?

Are you looking to continue using Mscaler with DAVE or are you giving up the Chord combo to move up to DAVE and planning on using the DAVE without Mscaler?

If you plan on running DAVE by itself then I would probably say get a proper streamer and keep your TT2/Mscaler combo.

If your upgrade is DAVE/Mscaler combo then probably go that route and add a streamer later.

@audphile1 and everyone

Sorry I didn’t make it clear to everyone.

Yes, I will keep using M Scaler.

The dac100%  for a streamer is just bringing the signal in 

the Dac or sourse most important part of the audio chain .

the higher quality the better ,this is the end point where the signal goes down stream to all other components before reaching the Loudspeakers .

once a signal is sent good or bad it cannot be improved upon later this is why 

is is crucial for the fidelity of your audio system. The streamer is important also 

but it does-not do the final Digital to Analog conversion .