Ok so that’s an old post, and personally my thoughts regarding dacs have drastically changed since then lol, this was before I really went into the deep end of dacs in my own setups for headphones
The adi 2 is nice if you will actually use all the features it has to offer, but otherwise imo I might prefer other dacs in the range for the price, neutral and capable but nothing really mind blowing or anything
The gumby is still a solid dac, but personally only something I would recommend if you can get a nice used one under 600ish, as I think the bifrost 2 offers more for the money (and an actually good single ended output as well that’s better than the gumby), warmer smoother neutral, slightly relaxed but capable
The ifi pro idsd is a nice dac, although at new price, I really can’t recommend it as I think there are other dacs in that range that outperform it, but used around the 1.3k range it would make sense if you wanted a warmer more thick and forward sound that’s pretty energetic
The chord is indeed a solid dac but it’s kinda not got much going for it at MSRP, but if you find a good deal on one used, it’s a pretty neutral and revealing dac that’s pretty refined
The spring 2 level 2 or kte is still something I really like for the price, very solid
The thing I said about the higher end dacs is actually pretty false from my experience now lol, it’s easily worthwhile but you have to make sure you get synergy right. I’ve always been around higher end dacs and demoed many of them, but never really decided to use them in headphone setups, I was too obsessed with the headphones/speakers themselves for the longest time, but clearly that isn’t the case now lol
I would disagree today now lol
This one is still something I would agree with
This is a yes and no for me, in the end there are analytical, neutral, and colored r2r, as is there for sigma delta, so it depends
I don’t know if it’s super unique tbh but they do have a house sound lol