Not true. When “endgame” is used in headphones and related discussions it’s often personalized, i.e. “MY endgame”, not like a video game’s highest level and the corresponding content that’s available there, which is the same for everyone. As such, it’s absolutely budget-limited, namely the highest sum person X would ever pay for any product in that category (though it could still be argued that it’s wrong if they’re just limiting it to some trivial/short-term budget even if they know in general they could pay more for that kind of product). Notice the personalization in how the term is used by this well-known headphone community member: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l0EtAF_lEk 
I see your point for sure. But it’s like what Ohmboy said. People say “endgame”, then people recommend the very best and therefore very expensive products and then when people clarify their budget, the recommendations become invalidated. The point is just that if you have a budget, then always include it, to get the best advice.
Ok so we all agree the expression “Endgame” is a rubbish phrase when it comes to headphone and audio stuff and should be limited to gaming and Monopoly lol.
Ok let’s not turn this into a debate over the word endgame lol
Hi. Seems that you started with ‘‘money is no object’’ suggestions, then mytek is ‘‘expensive’’ and you ended with some DAC decisions that none of them I believe has MQA which was a necessity for you at first place. Anyway, I would suggest you a DAC from Audioquest, maybe Cobalt which is at the same price range with THX and also supports MQA. Good luck.
I woundnt trust a USB DAC Stick. So minimal, no way. I have the Focal Elex and Aivas and i’ll soon have my 789 THX amp. I want MQA too. So barring the fact that i might win the lottery suddenly lol, i’ve been thinking a lot about the SMSL M500. I like the EQ settings on it to. But im worried about that fact that it only uses one DAC chip. Shouldnt a balanced DAC use 2?
I mean yes, but tbh you don’t need to have two dacs to get great sound. It has a balanced output stage, not a fully balanced signal chain, but again that doesn’t really matter if it preforms imo
1 Like
hmm, ok…
Well we should really take a look at the ifi line Krisztian. I found out that with a firmware upgrade a lot of their dacs can be turned into MQA dacs
That’s true, but they don’t made a more midrange dac only, so you would want to get something like the idsd micro bl or the xDSD
even the smsl m500 dac is bugging me. its too expensive and its not a pure DAC. it has a amp in it. so im paying for the amp too when i dont need it? I dont understand why theres so few options out there for a MQA DAC. I would like a nice dedicated transparent uncolored balanced DAC to pair with my THX 789 for under 300$ Guess i’ll just have to wait.
Well I mean the headphone out isn’t what they put the most money into (as far as I know), and it’s still a good dac. The main issue is finding a pure dac with MQA support under 300, as there are other pure dacs in that range that are great but with no mqa support
Well… that was a nice DAC. I try to ignore the price 
1 Like
That is my problem. Why there is no Pure high quality MQA dac in the Sub 1000 dollar range. And yes I said the money is not important here but a 2500 dollar dac which is in Europe is 2600 Euro. Its an overkill for a thx and the waste of hp outputs. Another problem is that I can’t stand the look of the iFi products. So there is almost one choice thats the SMSL S500 for a good balanced mqa dac below 1000 dollar. Or should I go for the Topping D70/90 which seems more of a quality pure dac but its fully balanced so in theory its not gonna give me any better performance than a single chip unit right? Cos the thx is not fully balanced. And how about the two Schiit unit the Schiit Bifrost 2 and the Schiit Gungir? I’m a bit lost in the sauce here. Why I’m such a perfectionist? 
If your not gonna do MQA i would recommend the SMSL SU8. its cheap at 200$ and Balanced and has additional EQ filters. By everyones estimate it sounds very good. Or you could go with the Grace SDAC Balanced that massdrop sells for 150$ I got that and it sounds very good too.
For my part i got till December till they ship my 789 and probably a week or 2 after that. Then i’m gonna use my Grace dac and wait for someone, probably SMSL or ifi to put out something a little more reasonable. Maybe Drop or Monoprice will do something. I dont like spending more than the price of my amp for a dac.
I think the MQA thing will catch on. Theres only 2 services offering it. Tidal came out only 5 years ago and Qubuz just started this year. Both offering the Masters quality recordings off MQA. Ive heard people talking about it and it mentioned in reviews and such all over the place. I’m sure it will catch on eventually.
SU8 filters doesn’t really do much. They are not EQ, unless I’m completely misunderstood that feature on my SU8.
There are dac rolloff filters, and sound coloration modes that adjust the harmonic distortion not frequency response
Whatever these settings are doing they must be very subtle, because I remember playing with them for hours and couldn’t discern convincing difference.
The dac filters are pretty subtle, but the filters like rich, tube, etc do make a noticeable difference imo
1 Like
Interesting, I’ve just tried again and still couldn’t notice any, even from supposedly contrasting modes like “Tube” and “Crystal”. Probably I need to hook it up to a pair of resolving headphones and/or more serious test track. On my KEF Q100s and whatever it was on my playlist I couldn’t hear any difference.
They might be harder to hear on speakers, but they are still fairly smaller changes. I think the bass and high end changes are easiest to spot the changes between some of the modes