Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

AUdiolabyrinth - I read that article. His impressions agree with both of ours. And with Steve's. The BEST DAC is one with a built in USB to i2S converter that is top tier. As he stated, even MANY ultra exotic DAC's have crappy, inexpensive USB converters built in.

That is why the new BA Reference DAC doesn't have a USB input. They expect you to use their external USB-SPDIF conveyer if you need USB in. I respect that and wish more high end companies just went that route.

I have said, and will say again, that I think one of the big reasons my OSDE keeps beating the competition is because of its internal Off Ramp tecnhnology. Look at Alex's DSD-S as an example. He spent the time and money to put in a solid USB input and his DAC clearly showed that.

If you have a spinner or a Music Server as a source - anything with SPDIF out (or i2s) then my comparison may not be 100% applicable for your needs. But if you are using a computer as a music source, the ODSE is practically impossible to beat for close to it's price.

Thankyou matt, I wanted you to see it, cheers.

11-03-14: Mattnshilp

I have said, and will say again, that I think one of the big reasons my OSDE keeps beating the competition is because of its internal Off Ramp tecnhnology.

....if you are using a computer as a music source, the ODSE is practically impossible to beat for close to it's price.

That first point was made by others at the beginning of this thread. One logical conclusion is to buy an Off Ramp (or something like it) for your existing dac. In an ideal (or future) audio world, a server will do this for you. Its simply an engineering lag with computers as our fish with legs....

I believe music servers are the future, I agree with Agear +1!

If you use a computer as source, the current rages are HQPlayer upsampled to DSD256 in Windows ASIO or Windows Server 2012R2 in CORE mode.

I have been told that straight USB beats any converter with these two approaches, so maybe the low hanging fruit is optimization of software filtering, or killing needless computer background processes.