Recommend Topping D90, latest from Topping at $699 now
I’m really eager to hear your impressions on this. Or if you can hear any difference at all, for that matter.
I found this sound demo of D50 DAC compared to the ARES DAC.
Don’t usually care for sound demos, but it’s a nice ‘relative’ comparison. Definitely makes me a bit more interested in the Ares DAC.
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And that seems to be the original, the II was an improvement from that 
So, when it comes to R2R dacs, I’m not aware of many, at least not ones usually recommendable. I can only think of three from different price ranges: Drop Airist R2R, Denafrips Ares II, Holo Audio Spring 2 KTE. Any others?
I mean, personally I wouldn’t suggest spending over 1k in your case imo. There are lots of options out there, what type of sound are you aiming for? The soekris 1451 also comes to mind.
The ares II is my rec
Some people seem to like the Schiit Bifrost. I’m personally probably going to get the Ares 2 DAC for sure to try it out.
BuT tHaTs A mUlTiBiT nOt R2r
Lol… is that actually a thing? People make that argument?
Sometimes, just messing around tho lol
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Be sure to post your thoughts on it, when and if you do, I’d be interested to hear what you think.
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Yeah, I definitely will. It’ll be at least a couple months though. Will probably put in a order before the end of January… but there is a 6-8 week lead time.
I’m not personally after anything right now, just find r2r interesting and wanted to know what was generally recommendable out there. I’ve seen you post about the KTE before and it looks pretty cool, doesn’t mean I’d get it, but it certainly looks nice. But again, I don’t know what kind of step up that is between any of these dacs, so I guess I’d ask what your thoughts were on that.
Edit: Ugh, meant to reply to M0N, not myself.
The Schiit Multibit DAC’s use multiple 18 bit TI DAC chips designed for ultrasound machines.
They are resistor ladder implementations, just on a chip.
They get extra bits by using multiple chips and the last few by dithering.
No one makes audio focused resistor ladder chips any more, I think Burr Brown were the last of them.
The ladder on a chips solutions are going to be more accurate than the physical resistor ladders, you just can’t buy resistors with enough accuracy, the trick used in the higher end R2R DAC’s is to use two ladders and what’s termed linear compensation.
So their are “differences in implementation”, but honestly Multibit is just R2R without the visible resistor ladder.
I really like my Gungnir Multibit FWIW, I will post an updated impressions in a few days.
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My thoughts on the spring2 kte? I thought it does a crazy good job at recreating a space, and how it presents things it just sounds more (I hate to say this) 3d than other similarly priced dacs I have tried. It also has very good separation that just makes it sound so good imo. Detail is pretty great but isn’t stand out. I also think the timbre shines as well as it sounds very natural, but it is colored. I think if you wanted a little less colored sound the soekris would be my choice. If you wanted something similar to the spring2 kte for less the ares II is my pick as I think it is going for a similar thing.
I personally think r2r and multibit do a better job of recreating space compared to sigma delta
Colored in the sense of warmer? Or different than that?
That’s what I like about the Gungnir, it’s presentation of space is much better than anything else I’ve heard (I haven’t heard the spring) and the timbre is just really nice.
Yeah, that’s what draws me into them more than some other dacs. Although recently that tube dac (the primaluna) did a dang good job for a sigma delta. I wonder if that’s the tube output stage, or the tube clock (oscillator), or the very nice burr brown chip (I really might pick one of those up)
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Speakers and HPs have their own sound or “color”.
Amps have their own sound or color.
Preamps can and usually do (some make it their main selling point) have their color…
WHY THE %&@%$^ do I also want a DAC that injects color into an already potential pallet of colors? It’s the one opportunity in the audio world to do one thing… give you exactly what was recorded/encoded into the music. I simply don’t understand the need other than the Hi-Fi world doing what it does best, up sell yo stuff you really don’t need.
Build quality, implementation, accuracy, brand name. Whatever you want to use to increase the sale price but I just don’t see color as a need in a DAC.
I’m torn, this hobby sucks with warped logic. The majority of the time spent on my computer this holiday season has been spend reading, researching DACs. All I’ve come up with is, wait another year and they’ll be cheaper and better still next Black Friday.
It its a bit warmer, but the kte has a more unique tuning than that, I really can’t tell exactly what it’s doing tbh. It seems to make things warmer without really increasing the midrange or bass too much, and it also sweetens things up too.
One complaint I have with it though is that the DSD implementation is not very good. It really looses its life when using dsd because of the poor implementation. But PCM sounds excellent so I just convert dsd to pcm on the fly with that dac
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