Looking to pick up a DAC, new or used that has balanced outs and can handle an SACD input among others. Been looking at the Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 (not sure if this will handle SACD) and PS Audio Perfect Wave. Thoughts?
Red Wine Audio Isabellina...hardly ever mentioned on Audiogon and while having some limitations, it produces very smooth and natural sound. It retails for 1500.
The only "DACs" that handle SACD input are either using a proprietary protocol (Meridian, EMM Labs and others), or they are Surround Sound Processors with HDMI interface.
There is no other way to get SACD (either native DSD or converted to high rez PCM) from a transport into a DAC, due to licensing restictions.
I just got in the North Star Design 192kHz/32bit DAC because I'm reviewing it for hometheaterreview.com were I'm a staff reviewer.
This DAC from Italy without any were being close to be broken in still sounds better to me then the Wyred 4 Sound DAC2, Benchmark DAC1 or PS Audio Perfect Wave. It extremely well built and very fairly priced, around $1200.00. If your interested E-mail me for more details.
I've had very good results with the PerfectWave DAC and the Bel Canto DAC3. I ended up keeping the Bel Canto, because I wasn't going to use the networking options that the PerfectWave offered and for my ears, in my system, I prefered the Bel Canto.
PS audio is releasing an upgrade to the perfectwave DAC for $1000 this month. If it is as good as suggested, this may well turn the PWD into a giant killer. Worth waiting a few more weeks and hear initial reports. You could score a used PWD for less than 2K and do the upgrade and stay within budget. It will also have asynchronous USB if you want to do computer audio but don;t want to mess with their networked architecture.
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