I know this is asking a lot, but could you explain the differences between multi-bit/R2R and a “regular” DAC like my SMSL SU-8?
Maybe use examples of how different pieces of music change with each DAC?
Think of it as explaining it to a child with no technical knowledge. 
Thanks!
A lot of people feel that r2r dacs recreate space better and sound much more realistic, whereas DS dacs use upsampling to hit the bit rate, which results in compression, grain and harshness, IMO.
I dont want to make any statements that are technically invalid or incorrect, so the link below is helpful.
Thanks for the link, but I was looking for personal examples. I hear a lot about the improvements that a higher end DAC will bring.
However I know that it will not come close to the immediate pleasure that a $1,100.00 headphone would bring me. So I am just trying to gauge the upside for a very large (to me) expenditure.
Thanks for the reply though. 
I read that the Focal Clear is narrow and bright. The G111 sounds wider and more warm than RNHP, so maybe the G111 is better suited for Clear?
I have the clear paired with the g111. It does open the cans a bit, but it’s only a bit and slightly more warm. For the DAC I’m using the Burson composer with 4 dual vivid 6 opamp’s. I’m very happy with the end result.
Personally I feel the rnhp has better synergy with the clear for a few reasons, I feel the rnhp more accurately represents natural presentation for the clear, it’s true that the clear doesn’t have that wide of a stage, and the g111 does end up being a wider amp than the rnhp, but the rnhp to me ends up having more precise placement and greater depth than the g111, and the g111 staging can feel unnatrual and inaccurate at times with the clear imo (as the g111 can exaggerate and artificially create stage whereas the rnhp will only feel as large as the recording, so imo it more accurately conveys the space the recording has to offer and will be more dependent on source material for it’s performance). Another reason I prefer the rnhp with the clear is timbre and overall organicness, the g111 is more studio neutral (personally I wouldn’t call the 111 warm imo) , but the rnhp ends up having more correct tonal density and better timbre than the g111 with the clear, where the g111 can sometimes sound either overly dry or lean leading to a bit unnatrual sound, so while the g111 is more deadpan neutral I would say the rnhp is more accurate to me for studio use as it’s closer to what I would hear naturally while still being very technical. I would also say that in terms of dynamics, while the g111 does have greater control and impact in the bass (the rnhp isn’t lacking impact or anything, but it can’t slam like the 111 can), the rnhp to me more accurately controls and presents dynamics overall outside of subbass with the clear. Generally I would say both are equally detailed for surface level detail and one doesn’t have a large edge over the other in this regard, the g111 might be a bit more forward with it’s detail but the rnhp more naturally presents that detail and might better convey low level detail imo, but I will actually say the rnhp can pull forward more harshness or flaws from some tracks where the g111 can at times more smooth that over (which is a benefit on the rnhp for studio but potentially a downside for casual listening, so the rnhp will shine more with better recorded music (and a better dac) but be more unpleasant with poor recordings)
I think the rnhp works well with the clear spatial recreation to enhance it’s placement and accuracy, ends up being more accurate with timbre and organicness, and also tends to better showcase the focal dynamics. The g111 feels more dead studio neutral (which can be nice) but also somewhat lacking when it comes to naturalness of sound and space (with the clear), whereas the rnhp feels more natural/neutral, I would still end up trusting the rnhp + clear more for studio than I would the g111 + clear, but both amps would allow for both accurate studio use and casual listening without being lacking in either respect.
Another thing to consider is what dac you plan to use, as the rnhp is more picky on what sounds accurate with it and can get harsh or unpleasant with the wrong dac (or spatially lacking if your dac is lacking on that regard, same for dynamics), where the g111 is more forgiving in that regard, generally I would say that the rnhp + bf2 or g111 + 1321 (or 1421) represents one of the better bang for buck dac pairing for each amp and that’s what I’ve gone off when I talk about these differences in sound assuming they are paired with these dacs. The reason I picked the bifrost 2 with the rnhp is that imo it doesn’t really knock off the balanced signature of the rnhp, helps add more weight to the bass, enhances timbre and body without getting sloppy or overly rich and colored, and is still very revealing overall. I will say the bifrost 2 is a bit smoother than neutral which can tame treble a bit but it’s not enough to cause any issues and is helpful for less than ideal recordings. The reason I say the soekris dacs with the g111 is that the soekris help to tame the stage of the g111 which does reduce width a tad but increases accuracy in it’s stage, enhances speed, improves treble detail and clarity, and generally makes it fairly linear sounding. The soekris doesn’t have the best timbre though, so I would say timbre could potentially be an issue but it’s not bad enough to where I would say it causes that much issue
In the end it’s going to come down to what you want out of the clear, what dac you plan to consider, and what you listen to. Overall the rnhp to me plays more to the strengths of the clear than the g111 does, but in the end either amp is going to get you a pretty satisfactory experience. And I would end up saying that if you go for multiple headphones that the g111 would be more versatile for multiple different types of cans (as the rnhp can struggle with some of the harder to drive planars), but if you want to focus on the clear, to me the rnhp is the one to get out of the two
I have the SMSL Sanskrit 10th MK2 (AK 4490), I hope its going to pair well with both of these amps. thank you for the insight!
It should do the job for the time being, but you might be surprised at how much benefit you can get later on with an upgrade. It should give a good enough experience to feel out what the amps can do (but it is something to consider when you compare your findings), and then pick one over the other, but once you decide which one you go with, it would def be worthwhile to upgrade later on to take the setup to a higher level of performance. Hopefully both amps go well for you, curious to see what happens
what dac should I get next? dacs are cheaper than amps, so I might aswell upgrade now
I think that would depend on what amp you decide to go with, generally I would also say that with these amps you would be spending about equal or more on the dac to go along with them. Personally I think that there tends to be a performance gap between like 200-700 where there are plenty of sub 200 options, but after that you need to make a significant jump in price to get a significant jump in performance. I would mention the bifrost and soekris dacs depending on what amp you get, but another potential option for the g111 might be a denafrips ares ii which would make the g111 less neutral and more warmer smoother and fuller with better timbre, but it might get a bit too colored for my tastes with that amp.
Generally I think if you really didn’t have the cash to spend for the higher end dacs, you could meet in the middle with something like an allo revolution dac with the shanti power supply, which imo can sound pretty solid with both the rnhp and the g111, and is also flexible in how it sounds since you can tune the signature to your liking with the features it has. I will say this dac isn’t as high preforming as the bifrost 2 or the soekris dacs with these amps (I think both the bifrost and soekris tend to be on a higher level of spatial recreation, dynamics, and time domain things although the allo might have better timbre than the soekris 1321 but not as good as a 1421), but it is in a price range where I think it tends to be pretty solid for the price to make it worthwhile. But personally I would shoot for the bf2 if you go with the rnhp or the soekris dacs if you go lake people (soekris also have a new dac lineup coming out atm so you might be able to find some good deals on the used older soekris like the 1421 or 1541) if you can, but I think the allo would be a good middleground there for a solid upgrade. You could always get the dac with their cheap 15 buck power supply, but I think at least the nirvana smps is a decent quality improvement (which is like 50 ish bucks more), and the shanti lps is a further improvement in performance as well which is like 150 bucks more (generally the better power supplies improve dynamics and impact, improve control, and assist in a more natural sound)
Buying a DAC seems to be a difficult task for a German guy like myself. I don’t plan on spending more than the amp itself + it needs an optical input (because over usb there is some electrical interference with my computer) + it has to be purchasable in Germany. I looked into various online shops and found nothing lol
So in order for me to get a worthwhile dac upgrade, I need to buy from overseas and it has to be like 500€+? Could you like give me a rough estimate on how much better the bifrost2 or soekris dac is in comparison to the smsl sanskrit 10th mk2?
It’s really hard to qualify things like that.
The Bifrost2 was obviously better to me than any of the <$200 options I’d heard, it’s at a comparable level to the Gungnir, though they have somewhat different signitures and the latter has better technicalities when run balanced. Most of the noticeable part is in better staging, and improved resolution.
How much that better is worth to you, only you can say.
Personally I wouldn’t try and change evrt]thing in one go, you’ll have no way to understand what is giving you what, swap the headphones, get the RNHP or lakepeople amps, then worry about the DAC.
Soekris is Danish so within EU. But I would take Mon’s advice and do it one at a time.
I had the lake people with the smsl m100 for about 3 months before moving on to another DaC. I went higher than I needed but I have other uses for it in the future.
Hmmmm gotcha. Regarding the usb issue, on the bifrost 2 it has really good isolation so usb noise is likely to not be that big of an issue, but with other dacs it could cause more issues. I’m not really sure what’s available directly in germany without going over budget, but I would assume you could buy in the eu correct or is that too much of a stretch? I know stuff like the rme adi 2 dac fs comes to mind, but that’s most likely more than you would want to spend, and personally while I think it’s features are pretty neat, I don’t find the dac on it’s own to be that impressive for the price (but if you are a fan of eq it’s pretty nice). I think you could most likely also find something like a mytek liberty dac used for a decent price over there. You might also find something like a pro ject dac box rs over there which is pretty nice
I know schiit has an eu distributor but the price is higher than in the us (but there might be some used eu bifrost 2 out there perhaps), and for soekris if you go lake people they sell direct in europe, but those are more than you would most like want to spend.
I see a few used bifrost 2 in germany which might be worthwhile (you could try and work on a lower price but I don’t know if offering different prices is considered rude or not in germany):
I don’t see any soekris for sale used in europe at the moment though.
Regarding the ares ii, it is sold by vinshine and they used to offer free worldwide shipping with prices including vat which made it cheaper to get than the bifrost, but I don’t see that option on their site anymore so I’m not sure
https://www.vinshineaudio.com/product-page/denafrips-ares-r2r-dac
There other good dacs that you might be able to find around you, but I’m just not super sure what can be had where you are or what options are available to you locally
It’s hard to really give a definitive answer there, but for me personally it makes large enough of a difference to justify the purchase and make it worthwhile imo, it’s significant enough to where it’s worth the added cost to the setup
It’s one of those things that once you get into the higher end, everything doesn’t always sound good with everything else. Like how @Hazi59 mentions how much of a mismatch and how the soekris sounded very poor with the rnhp, but sounded really good with the lake people, when you continue to move up you have to pay more careful attention to matching components to sound good together. In the end you kind of have to take things from an entire signal chain perspective, as looking at components in isolation isn’t going to take into account what they might be matched with or paired with, so the final sound is determined by the entire chain of the components working together, not things in isolation. I would say for now just enjoy trying out the different amps and see what they can offer, and when you find the one that calls to you the most, then start working on what dac to find, you don’t want to jump the gun and buy a dac that works better with the amp you didn’t like as much lol
So a question for you, or really anyone. How do you perceive accurate placement? Without knowing where things were in a room relevant to a recording device how can you evaluate that attribute.
There are a few ways you can generally tell. I’ve listened back to some recordings I’ve done myself for studio use, and the rnhp + clear used to be a fairly common thing I would use often, so generally I ended up using it on material that I was either there for the recording and know how it should have sounded and compare that to other experiences with amps. The other ther way is just hearing a recording though a multitude of different systems at different levels that’s well recorded, generally you can figure out how something was supposed to sound or the way space was intended to be recreated through comparing the differences in the experience with each different system, that can give you a rough estimation of what something generally should sound like but it will never be 100% accurate or anything like that (well rarely anything is 100% accurate lol, and that accuracy is only perceived by me anyways, so opinions on accuracy will naturally differ there with the material used, the gear used, and the experiences of the listener, etc)
The clear is also one of those headphones that it’s spatial recreation is impressive but not that organic at times, since I would say it’s a more spherical representation of space which is pretty engaging and holographic but it isn’t laying things out in a room and recreating an accurate space to the recording, so interesting but not lifelike, which I think the rnhp ends up causing the clear to have a more natural presentation of sound where it doesn’t exaggerate space or placement and tends to make the clear’s spatial recreation more in line with what the recording generally has to offer. To me accurate placement is something I would more use in reference to real life, as in how accurate does something place sound in space (or how well does the headphone recreate the space of a room or the sound of a room in a recording to be more accurate), and the closer it is to what something should sound like in person, the more accurate I would find that to be. For most it really is just going to come down to the simple question of “does this sound realistic or not” when it comes to discussing accurate placement.
Im considering those dacs now (with optical input and inside EU):
I find the choice of dacs very odd.
Usually, the headphone has the most impact on sound quality, while the amp comes in 2nd and the dac comes in 3rd. Therefore, the order in price should be: headphone > amp > dac.
Which is not the case here.
For example:
Focal Clear 1000€, Bifrost 2 (EU) 900€, RNHP 500€.
In this case, the headphone is the most expensive audio gear, which is normal.
The DAC however, cost nearly as much as the headphone itself, while the amp is the cheapest link of the bunch.
From a beginner audiophile perspective, it doesn’t look economically right, do you know what I mean?
So when we get to the higher end of things, the prices just go wild between headphone-dac-amp?
EDIT: I corrected the price and the link of the DENAFRIPS ARES II R2R DAC
I don’t see anything wrong with DAC, AMP and HP costing the same.
Gotcha. Also just wondering wouldn’t the ares ii be more around 600 euro or is there a fair bit more added tax that I didn’t realize (mainly saying this because the price on their site is in singapore dollars)?
Yes it is pretty different isn’t it
So in the beginner space, generally the headphone greatly outweighs the importance of the source gear for sure. But as you continue to move up the brackets, the higher end headphones become more and more dependent on the quality of source gear for their performance, and will preform significant better with nicer equipment (as they were mainly designed for use with higher end source gear compared to more budget headphones). The headphone is still where you want to have the most money in your setup for sure, but generally when you get to the 1.5k ish range for headphones, you end up spending just as much on your amp and dac (so like 1.5k on headphones, 1k ish on amp + dac stack) which actually tends to be a good balance (in your case it tends to be where you will end up spending more on your dac mainly because of location and availability). The reason in this case why the dac costs are outweighing the costs of the amps, is mainly because dac’s don’t scale as linearly as headphones and amps do. Like consider how there are lots of options in each price bracket for headphones and amps, where there are noticeable upgrades after like every 300 dollar increment. But for dacs, inside that like 200-700 dollar range, there aren’t many good options imo. There are dacs in that range and they would be an upgrade to what you have, but it wouldn’t really be that big of a difference tbh, it’s a marginal upgrade, there is just a big performance hole in the market where in order to get the quality dacs, you have to end up pushing more towards that sub 1k+ range to get some of the dacs that will actually bring a large benefit to your system. It just ends up being worthwhile to spend the extra for a dac that will more greatly enhance your system for the money, and with the dacs and amps mentioned, I would personally say that it is still a balanced system and the amp will not bottleneck the dac and the headphones won’t be a bottleneck either.
If you continue to go up in high end headphones, like let’s say a focal utopia, people commonly spend around the same amount of money on an amp for them alone, and then equally as much on the dac, so people commonly spend 2-3x the cost of the headphone on their electronics in the very high end, mainly because it still continues to offer good performance and maximize the value of their headphones. I’m not saying you should do this with your clear or anything, but I’m just saying that as you continue to go up, you will see more and more people spend much more on their source gear than their headphones.
In terms of let’s say the rnhp + bifrost 2 setup, if you decide to go past that point, the cost for an amplifier that will be a substantial improvement over the rnhp will end up being around 1.5k for the amp alone, and an upgrade from the bifrost would most likely end up costing similar or more, so while the cost of the rnhp + bifrost 2 would end up being somewhat similar to the headphones (more in your current case unless you find a deal or buy used), it will be a very good balance for the money to maximize what the clear has to offer you
The headphone is still the most important part, but investing in higher end source gear for higher end headphones will allow those headphones to preform at a higher level than they were before