Hey guy’s, I got a Liquid Spark a week or so ago, I’ve been using my Onkyo CD player as a source. It works great and I love it, but that rules out using the Spark for streaming or my flac file’s.
So I’m look for a dac to pair with the Spark.
The SMSL M100 and the Schitt Modi 3 are on my short list. The M100 can do higher bit rates then the Modi 3 but I dont have any music higher then 192/24 anyway or should I look at future proofing, most of my music is 44.1/16 CD rips. Obviously I haven’t heard either of the two.
Any suggestions on those or any other DAC’s would be awesome. Im looking at a budget of between $100-$200.
How are you going to feed it? If you’re going usb I recommend the topping D10 since it has digital outputs for future upgrades. If you have the patience a khadas tone board plus a case for it would be the best performance under $200.
Would most probably mostly use the USB from my laptop. Since those 2 DAC I mentioned has the inputs I was thinking I would use the coax for my CD player and the toslink for my Chromecast Audio, so then the DAC would also work as a switch for the amp between the diffrent sources. I’ll give the D10 a search and have a look at it.
Must admit I have no idea what a tone board is, is it like a hat for a Raspberry Pi? I’ll search the khadas and find out. Thanks for the suggestions.
I second this suggestion. The D10 is kind of like the JDS Atom of DACs. It performs extremely well objectively and is inexpensive. It’s neutral and built solidly.
SMSL SU8 VS2. I have used it with the liquid spark, I got it on Drop though when it was being offered to meet your price requirement. More features than you need and would help keep you ready for upgrades
That’s a pretty unbalanced system, the d10 would be a better match just because the su-8 is overkill. I would instead suggest putting more of your budget towards an amp and less towards the dac