My trusty DAC has died - Please help me find a suitable replacement

Thanks for your reply! I thought I was set on the Fostex, but I guess the hunt begins anew…

The CMA400i would indeed be a perfect solution for what I’m looking for, but it’s rather hard to get here and will cost me €900,- so quite a lot more than I was hoping to spend.

The only other viable candidate I have managed to find so far is the EL II amp & dac stack by SDL Labs, or their Element II combo. Have you had a chance to try those by any chance?
They are not as convenient for me to operate in my current setup, but if their performance is significantly better than the Fostex, I may just have to learn to live with that. I’d just have to import them from the States which is a bit of a pain.

Thanks again!

Ah I got back, tried the pre out, works as intended, holding down the button is simple enough, well now I know lol

Also what countries can you buy from used btw?

Ah sweet, that at least is good to know. Thanks for trying and getting back to me! I appreciate that.

It’s just that I don’t have a whole lot of room on my desk and so my current dac/amp is a bit tucked away towards the wall underneath my tv/monitor. The Fostex, being the same size as my current dac, wouldn’t require any changes to my setup, whereas anything else would probably require me to move some things around and hope that my cables are still long enough, etc. etc. So having that button on the front of the unit would have been way more convenient for me. But oh well, I guess I can’t be too picky.

As far as buying used goes, anything within the EU would work for me. Outside of it would mean that I’d have to pay import tax, which could easily add another €150+ so I’d like to prevent that if I can…

I would keep an eye on the used market for the questyle, I see one ebay kleinanzeigen for 600 euro but you would have to convince them to ship I think, but I have seen them pop up around the 550-600 euro commonly. Right now the used market is pretty dry though for some reason (also see a cma600i for about 800 euro on audio markt but that’s far out of budget although higher preforming)

As far as used gear goes, Head-Fi’s classified section has a lot of European sellers, so you might find something interesting there.

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Yeah I will do that. I’ve already been in contact with some sellers and all of the companies that sell it here, but it just didn’t work out. It either didn’t ship here, or it wasn’t in stock anywhere with the €1000 CMA600 as the only alternative they had to offer me.

And with the JDS Labs stack costing me $500 incl. internation shipping and probably another $200 in import tax, I figured I should probably just stick with the Fostex which I can get locally for €450 with 3 year warranty and 30 money back guarantee. So I may still just just try that and return it if I don’t like it.

But perhaps I should also clarify something and offer a bit of context; I can’t be considered an ‘audiophile.’ I’m working with a pair of KRK RP5 monitors and their 10" woofer, a $300 dac/amp from 2009, and a Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro with the intention of getting a Sundara as my first “proper” hifi headphone in the near future. So we’re not talking about a high-end, multiple thousands of dollars setup. It’s all relatively budget.

Within that context, would that change your opinions/recommendations regarding the type of unit that would work for me? Would the Fostex’s performance be enough for what I have? (@FBizzle) Would the CMA400i be overkill? I don’t know. What do you guys think?

Darn

That’s not bad, but it’s also not the best value, could you perhaps link a few stores you could buy from actually just to see what’s out there?

I mean kind of, but it’s not like you wouldn’t benefit from some nicer electronics now and down the line, but going too far overkill wouldn’t make sense. The main issue is that switch to go from headphones to pre lol, it narrows your options so much lol

A bit yes but it would be worthwhile if you plan to further get into the higher end side of things for audio

I’m hesitant with the Fostex amp because I honestly think that there are cheaper options for DACs that will outperform it. If I remember correctly, it is a tad warmer than other Burr Brown implementations I’ve heard, but I couldn’t get passed its resolution. The amp side, I think is adequate but it was hard for me to get a good sense of comparison because I felt the DAC was not capable so it threw of my listening, so I felt I couldn’t judge how well of an amp it had.

Would it be sufficient? Probably. But I do think there are possibly cheaper options that can out perform it. But I’m not sure what is available where you are.

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Haha tell me about it…

Yeah that totally makes sense and was my reasoning too. The main reason why I would be willing to go outside of my budget for the CMA400i was the fact that it would last me years and would give me more room for upgrades in the future.

https://www.thomann.de/nl/digitaalomzetter.html

This is a renowned store that I was planning to buy the Fostex from. But this is another option:

https://www.bax-shop.nl/koptelefoon-accessoires-onderdelen/dac

As well as:

https://www.keymusic.com/nl/winkel/digitale-converters/

All links take you straight to the DAC sections.

So just to clarify, you wouldn’t consider getting a separate headphone amp with a passive volume control/switch and dac? That would allow you to use separate components with the functionality you would want. For example, in the US you could get a schiit magni 3+ as the headphone amp, a schiit sys as the switcher and the volume control for both the speakers and headphones (you would just max the volume on the magni and control through the sys), and a dac like a topping E30? While schiit might not be an option where you are, we could replicate a setup like this for a similar price most likely. The main potential downside to a setup like this would be space but you could still make it somewhat compact

You know, I guess by having considered the JDS Labs stack I kind of already gave up on the necessity of it being an all-in-one unit. Yes, it would be most convenient in terms of footprint, but considering the incredibly limited amount of options that that leaves me, and because I can probably make room for it, let’s also look at a combination of separate components. Just so long as it allows for optical or S/PDIF in and RCA out, of course.

In that case aesthetics does become a slightly more important factor though, so it would be great if we could stick with the same brand/color. I love how a stack of Schiit units looks, for example.

Darn well the modi 3 isn’t my favorite, but it’s ok, but if you gotta have the stack I can understand lol, so the modi 3 + sys + magni 3+ would do what you want

The jds atom and atom dac are pretty nice, you could grab a mackie big knob passive or esi moco and connect it that way (you just want to look for something with 2 switchable outputs and a volume control)

EDIT: OK WAIT
I just noticed that the new Topping L30 has the ability to switch between headphones or pre out, and it should be the 100 buck range, and would stack nicely with the topping e30 if you wanted to wait for that

What about the Modi Multibit? (I don’t know what’s the difference, but that’s the only Modi that comes with a european power adapter.) Combined with the Magni 3+ and Sys, that would still be $400, so acceptable.

That is another nice combination! I’m generally not a big fan of digital displays, but it’s not too bad in black.

Any idea when the L30 will become available?

I do like the multibit for the most part, that would be a pretty nice combo imo, it is a bit warmer leaning but if that doesn’t bother you that would be nice imo

I think it looks a bit better in person but it doesn’t bother me

Uh not sure, perhaps a few weeks? I haven’t been keeping up with it too much

I’m actually a bit sensitive to highs (as I have noticed since owning the DT770 Pro) so I don’t think that would be an issue for me. So far I think that this combination has my preference.

I read July but since we’re nearly in August I don’t know what to expect lol. With my current dac down I would prefer not to have to wait for weeks so I’ll see if I can find more.

In any case, I’m going to have to buy a lot of RCA cables! But really, thanks for the your time, effort, and help M0N. I really appreciate it.

Just to clarify; I know it’s not their higher end stuff, but what would the combination of the Modi Multibit and Magni 3+ offer me in terms of future upgrades? Will it serve me well even if I go up in quality with my other gear, or will I then need to upgrade this too?

It would be a pretty solid foundation imo for most things you throw at it, I think you could reasonably go up in headphone quality prob around the 400-500 range before I would strongly suggest an upgrade, but it depends on the headphone

I see, thanks for that. I will probably not go above that anytime soon so that is good to know.

One final question; would that be the same if I went with the Modi 3 over the Multibit? I checked the manual and apparently I can just plug it into a power source with a USB adapter, so that would save me a lot of money.

Or would you strongly advice against getting the regular Modi 3, considering you don’t particularly like it? (Remember, I have no reference material whatsoever so it may just sound amazing to me lol.)

So I think the modi 3 is peaky and not as refined, it can be harsher and also kinda just lacking technicality wise. The modi 3 would do the job, but I think the multibit is a worthwhile upgrade

Alright, fair enough. Let’s not cut corners then. Thanks again for your advice! I’m glad to finally have found a solution.