"Short" High End DAC Comparison

A dcs network bridge at my desk, and an auralic aries g2.1 + leo GX.1 clock for my living room. I personally have liked the auralic streamers the most in terms of sound, features, and simplicity. The dcs is good in sound for example, but it’s interface for controlling it is meh and not as refined (reliable but basic, lacking some sorting/finding features that can make it slow to navigate through), the auralic user experience is just much better in that regard. I do think that with the clock, sq wise the auralic is a better sounding streamer, but without the clock I’d say the dcs and auralic are evenly matched in most regards sq wise. (I would have gotten a different 2ndary streamer than the dcs but a friend was selling one at a price that was real good, so I picked it up for my desk).

Also have an allo usbridge signature somewhere that is pretty good for the price if you need a good usb streamer on a budget. Otherwise if you don’t want usb go for a pi2aes

And no I don’t use roon since I bet this would also be another question that would get asked lol

Edit: ah also have a logitech squeezebox touch, but no fucking clue where that is

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What if I acted rashly - even considering recent conversations and said F it - and dropped on a Sonnet Morpheus now, without waiting for reviews…

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Well I don’t think that would be a bad thing, although the paring with the v281 is good but not great to me personally (although I think you could be fine with it, I’d just worry about getting a bit too soft and relaxed, but reasonably it wouldn’t be going overboard imo)

There’s a fair bit of other info out there besides here lol

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You can always take advantage of the return policy…probably depends on where you’re buying it tho.

They have an Aries Altair and Vega in their
Product lineup. Is the Aries the streamer to target?

So imo yes, because the aries is the most optimized one for sending data off to another dac being a purely digital outputting streamer, the vega is more focused on being a dac itself with streaming built in, and the altair aims to be an everything box more like a server, streamer, and dac

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Do you think this would be adequate to pair with a spring KTE via I2S? I inderstsnd it’s not as good as your g1 just wondering if passable.

I mean if you are looking for a good streamer then yes I think that would be a nice pairing with the spring. A don’t know about current software support though (so I don’t know how controlling it would go). Also not sure if that’s a good price or not, I don’t know pricing on it

Does the Holo stuff use a specific type of I2S connection?

I remember finding out the Holo stuff is not compatible with something like a Pi2AES via I2S somewhere…or is it the other way around?

I2S over HDMI, don’t know the pin out of it since I don’t use i2s on any of my dacs

Not sure, you would need to check the pinouts of the streamer and the dac to see if it’s compatible, one of them has the channels swapped I think

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There is no “standard” for Audio over I2S, some manufacturers do use the same protocol over HDMI.
I have no idea whether the Holo DAC’s are compatible with pi2AES, you’d have to ask someone who has tried it.

This is some of the different I2S implementations, note the PSAudio spec seems common and that’s likely what the Pi2AES uses.

Note this is not a complete list Aqua’s have I2S over RJ45 but it’s proprietary and isn’t documented.

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I had a Holo connected via HDMI I2S with a L.K.A S100 clock so find out whatever that uses and it will work.

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I think your library might be too big for Roon’s spec anyway.

Wait really? I do have a pretty large lib, but I make sure to only keep around 50-100k tracks that I would access at one time to keep things manageable. (Have chunks of my lib rotate and get pushed and pulled to and from cold storage to my active hot storage, so the larger portion of my lib always sits in archive but it gets rotated throughout the months to active servers). I’d assume roon could easily handle that size, if they didn’t that would be a real big let down (they would have to)

There is at least one user on the Roon forums with 850000 tracks, so I’m sure that would be fine.
Though at some point I’m sure the database becomes an issue for machines with limited memory.

Cool cool, I don’t have that many (likely more around ~400k tracks total)

Edit: currently it would read about 41,365 albums

Generally for what I do the around 50-100k tracks at one time is pretty manageable and not too sluggish so that’s what I tend to stick with

I think it should be fine…I hear some users put terabytes of music in there.

This looks like a good thing to keep an eye out in the used market although it might be VERY hard to come across a used one. Doing some reading, it looks like the way to go for someone that’s bought into a network bridge streamer and uses Roon and is looking for a next step in streaming quality. Seed planted.

One sold this week, listed on head-if, sold before I even saw the listing.

So a few bulleted quick impressions so far of a day of listening with the terminator ii:

  • NOS VS OS Slow (Sharp sucked, felt flat dynamically and spatially in comparison, and brittle in treble): So far, I actually like both. OS actually feels more capable with more accurate spatial recreation with a tad bit less width but much better depth, better control and command, more accurate attack and decay, separation improved, overall more forward, better dynamics, smoother treble. I think in NOS mode was overall more rich and relaxed (although not all that much more), tonal density was thicker, things were a bit more loose and chill and felt like they slammed more, stage wider but more vague, and also a bit more gritty and potentially jarring to me. OS is the way I’ve liked it more so far (unlike what I think about something like the ares ii)

  • Pretty meaty but not overdone, good weight and body behind notes (but less warmth than I would expect that accompanies that)

  • Bass has lots of impact and grunt, great control here without being too focused on being that way, so it does leave enough looseness to be fun.

  • A bit of a macrodynamic focus without sacrificing a ton in microdynamics (but it sometimes is noticeable that it lacks there), big changes have lots of range and energy but smaller ones can get a bit lost and feel a bit more dull

  • Nice smoothness in bass and midrange without losing that much definition and clarity, although below the lower mids clarity does take a slight hit

  • Surprisingly sparkly treble and air, actually can get a bit edgy and gritty at times which isn’t something I was expecting. But it’s not on every recording, so depends there. But treble is likely the weakest aspect so far, feels somewhat inorganic and unrefined in comparison to other dacs at this price point (and kinda slightly dry)

  • Signature to me feels more like a bit of a V almost (perhaps slightly warmer v, although I wouldn’t call this dac all that warm), which is pretty enjoyable. Midrange tends to focus more on lower mids rather than upper so perhaps that’s where I am getting the slight v impression.

  • Speed and separation are very good

  • Clarity is pretty nice despite it’s weight and thickness to notes, cleaner than I would have expected, although it feels slightly forced

  • Texture is pretty nice specifically in the bass

  • Stage background I’m a bit stuck on for now but I wouldn’t say it has the blackest background out there

  • Overall organicness is… hm, not sure. You would think it sounds fairly organic, but there’s constantly something reminding me things feel off, like I don’t want to say exaggerated, but I have a feeling it’s something to do with the treble presentation, it just feels unnatural

Edit: I think OS mode ends up messing with coherency a bit and also might be separating things out a bit too much, and that might be what’s throwing me off. I think the dac sounds more connected and better liquidity with nos on, and it also takes on a bit more convincing tonality imo. But I do like the technical performance of OS a lot.

Edit 2: Hmmm, but NOS mode still does sound off anyways because of it’s more raw presentation that feels mechanical at times (and more technically unimpressive), so still liking OS more. And it is getting better so burn in is likely at play here

Had it plugged in for like 2 days (yes I only mentioned it yesterday, but I’ve had it for a few, I had wrote the post but got distracted with something else and never hit post lol), so likely still going through burn in so these thoughts will likely change as the dac does. Although I hear there’s burn in at the factory so it’s likely not going to take that far longer to burn in

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