Resonessence Mirrus vs Sony HAPZ-1ES

Both of these units would allow me to eliminate a computer in my living room. I just heard both at The Show 2014 in Newport.

The Sony was played in many rooms with top notch gear and speakers. So that was a good endorsement for the Sony. I think the convenience factor of the Sony also played a role in why it was used in many rooms. All the systems sounded very good. I spent close to an hour in the Sony room listening to their top of the line speakers with he HAPZ. I could not get the demo person to turn off the DSD up-sampling. So the up-sampling must have been considered the way to go.

The Resonessence Mirrus DAC was played directly to a new 108 watt class A Resonessence stereo amp that has not been released yet. The DAC has a digital volume control that is supposed to be very good. The speakers that were used were 15 year old B&W, purchased by Resonessence from eBay for $400. I was quite blown away by how good the sound was and the fact that they did not purposely use top notch speakers. I was thinking wow what would this system sound like with some top notch speakers. The SD-Card feature of the Mirrus is maybe a better solution than the fan based eSata hard drive of the Sony. The theoretical limit of the cards the Mirrus supports is 2 tera-bytes. I think today you can buy 256 giga-byte cards.

I cannot directly compare the Sony and Mirrus since I have not heard them in the same system, but if I had to bet money, I would place it on the Mirrus based on my cursor listen. Has anybody compared the 2 DAC's in their systems? If so, I would appreciate any feedback.

If I go with something like the Mirrus I can eliminate by very good pre-amp and go directly to my amps. Has anybody with a Mirrus done this? Did you prefer it direct vs a analog pre-amp?

The Sony is very good sounding unit, 50%+ cheaper, extremely convenient, and I would keep my pre-amp. Which I am happy with (BAT VK-42SE).