Yep Eastein. I prefer the DAC1, but if one needed a warmer smoother presentation I might plump for the Apogee. This is because the Apogee has less resolution (but read on) than the DAC1, but does not have the thinness of the DAC1 and is warmer/smoother. I can imagine how in some systems it could sound more natural. To me the DAC1 is so good at giving the outlines of the sound that in complex music it can be wonderful. In less complex music you don't hear into the subtle micro detail so well. It is there but that emphasis on the outlines takes over. Neither the Apogee or the Lavry Blue do that, so that you can hear more of the many sounds that say a plucked upright acoustic bass makes. With the DAC1 the driving propulsive beat of say an electric bass will stand out better in a complex piece of music, but a solo instrument will sound less like the real thing and more like a facsimile of it. These distinctions are not large so differences between systems and musical tastes will easily cause others to have a different view on this than me.
When I first heard the DAC1 do this I was somewhat startled and wondered what I was listening to - was it better or worse than I was used to - it was certainly different. In my view it was a greater emphasis on macro dynamics than on microdynamics and a touch more emphasis on the leading edge of sounds rather than the body and decay. Yet nothing of this diminished its musicality.
My view is the DAC1 is the product of a very skilled designer using an enormous amount of insight into DAC design to produce a 'flavoured' but high performing DAC using very cheap basic components. My guess is that the cheap as chips 5534 output ICs are the reason for the distinctive sound of the DAC1 as I recognise some of their characteristics from the days when I designed/manufactured/marketed a range of preamps. But I never got one to have the smooth sound that the DAC1 achieves - it is a real testament to the progress of design and the quality of cheap mass produced chips.
Just on the other point, I agree Gunbei and Nealhood, and thanks for your comments. We need to present our opinions as how the experience occurred to us. If we wish to add credibility to it by presenting supporting comments or facts then all the better, but it is pointless to use this place to try to prove one person's observation is right and the other's is wrong. They are both right unless one is a deliberate lie. The fact that the observations are different means that the observer or what was being observed, or some other variable was not identical - and why should we expect that they were identical and so only one observation can be right?
As you say Nealhood. We trade our opinions and observations and make our own judgements on the credibility or otherwise of another's post - but we do not need a public debate about that credibility and we will never prove anything by doing that. We each decide how much to use the opinions of others as an addition to our own experiences so that we can decide what to sell/buy/try/next, and each of us does that differently.
I see these forums as a place to give freely information that might help others, and receive the same thing freely. There is no transaction here and therefore no obligation to each other than to be truthful and civil. The gift of that information is best accepted for what it is, not against what you might prefer it to be.
