New DSD DAC. Recommendations please

I'm currently auditioning the exaSound e20 MK III and so far I am impressed with its sound, especially on DSD. I've only had it for one day so more info to follow after additional listening. The e20 is under $3k.

The MSB Analog DAC has always sounded excellent at the shows, but it is more like $7k.

If your more interested in an analog like presentation. There is a massive thread here. These come in many variations.

http://www.lampizator.eu/newdac/lampizator/welcome.html

Dosen't Emm have a DSD?

Ayre Acoustics has just released an upgrade to their QB-9 DAC that you may find very interesting. It uses the ESS Sabre Reference chip and implements DSD, and designer Charles Hanson asserts that high res PCM sounds equally as great.

The original QB-9 is an amazing dac in its own right, with a great analog stage, zero feedback full balanced design, and full isolation of USB circuitry. Moreover, Ayre is offering a factory upgrade of older QB-9's for $500. So you can buy a used one for $1800 on Agon, get the upgrade, and enjoy a near state-of-the-art DAC for around $2300.

Make sure to get a DSD Dac that can play DSD128. the Ayre cant! Despite the paucity of material currently, more comes out everyday and many are ripping vinyl to this format.

The Ayre upgrade is also taking many months, and is USB only, so not ideal for all.

As far as I know the EMM Labs Dac 2x is DSD capable, so why the angst?

To me EMM, PBD aned Lampizator have the best DSD capabilities currently.

Re: "Make sure to get a DSD Dac that can play DSD128."

Bigger is better, right? So why would Charlie Hanson of Ayre Acoustics, a company whose components typically retail in the $5-$10k range, opt for single-rate DSD in his latest upgrade?

Check out this observation from Andreas Koch, one of the original developers for DSD and more recently, DOP:

"Double rate DSD pushes the noise shaper up in the frequency domain... That is most interesting for recording and post production when the intent is to release the product in DSD, because DSD2x gives the extra headroom that recording engineers need in order to record and edit without causing any degradation when releasing their final product in single rate DSD.

It may also be interesting for hobbyists who for instance want to archive their analog music library to a digital format. In such applications you may not care about the extra storage space that is required and you certainly wouldn’t be bothered with bandwidth bottlenecks when sending DSD2x files through the internet.

However, as a delivery format from studio to end user, SINGLE RATE DSD seems to offer an optimal combination of sound quality, bandwidth and storage space."

Single rate DSD seems to be proliferating lately, but double rate? Not as much.

So unless I decide to become a recording engineer, PCM and single rate DSD will remain my high res media of choice for now. And if things change, I'm confident that Ayre will be there offering reasonably priced upgrades.

Oh...and although they are more flooded with orders now, my QB-9 upgrade took 3 weeks.