Excellent and thorough write up! Well done.
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This model has been working for Hollywood, lol
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Now, these are some charts I can get behind!
M0N, thank you for taking the time to do this! What an amazing resource. As always, your approach is able grasp the immense and nuanced complexity of these comparisons, while still remaining intelligible to the lay audience like me.
I’ll take two Wavelights, please. Extra sauce!
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Part 2 is up, edited into the 2nd post, this one was a bit more shorter and concise
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This just keeps getting more impressive, @M0N.
I have one incredibly burning question, tho:
Do you carry insurance on all this?
I mean seriously…your house is probably the Fort Knox of audio gear. What happens in case of fire or tornado or [insert home-destroying disaster in your part of the world]?
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I appreciate the kind words, also glad the tables aren’t too confusing
Will pm about it lol
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Well in my past (I haven’t completely let go of this hobby but, I am also not able to practice it’s craft the way I want. due to my location) as an amateur radio operator (HAM), I carry a $20K rider on my homeowners for the gear and another $100K liability (incase an antenna or antenna support mast/tower were to fall over into a neighbors property etc.) One can do the same/similar for audio/electronics.
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Wow, this thread was something else. I’ll have to go over this in shifts haha. It’s a nice read. But I’m wondering, do you have a set reference that you use as a basis for comparison or is it all just from within the group? It would be interesting to know what your “key reference” is.
I would assume that, this being in the price range it is, that the difference between a 1 and a 4 in score isn’t going to be all that astronomical as if you were to compare it to a entry-level DAC? We’re talking differences in the upper 1% in my view.
I’ve heard some expensive gear over the years but not really any of these and certainly not with all of them in the same house or room for comparison.
On a tangential note, it’s sometimes very interesting to listen to stupendously expensive gear, only to have the room itself be the caveat to the whole setup. I’ve heard systems in the near $100k class or above but still thought they’ve sounded meh or hampered in some aspects to my own mediocre system (in direct comparison at least when it comes to speaker setups).
Speaking of that, did you listen with headphones or speakers and is there any DAC in particular you prefer for one or the other?
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It’s just all within the group, I guess everything is a reference? But I don’t really have like a “reference system” because personally I think that’s a bit of a flawed thing to do, since you then ignore synergy in favor of the reference system, and ignoring synergy is a no no if you are comparing for yourself. I should have further clarified, the dacs were written about in best possible case for something that has great synergy with it to better gather the potential of the dac, so all comments are best case for them in my setups at least. So chains were constantly shifted around, and dacs were assessed with the chain that had the most synergy. But yes the dacs were compared against each other in that group and there was no main single reference per se
So it’s not exactly the way I would say I scored things, the number rating is just what I think leads the pack in performance out of the group it was being compared against. Generally these differences were not minute, but no it wouldn’t be as drastic as going from entry level to high end. If something got a ! on it, that did mean I think it was substantial enough to make a big difference and sway me toward it with that one aspect. I think a flaw in my writing was forcing myself to not create ties or equal, as some of the stuff really should have been equal to each other and ended up being narrowly better/worse, where some things were more substantially that way, which you couldn’t really gather how things were rated so there was no good way to tell how substantial the changes between the numbers were. Good catch
Regarding the differences in high end, the whole 1% difference thing to me is both true and untrue. I think while the differences might seem small on casual listen or first demo, those smaller changes can have a drastic effect on the experience long term and can change something from meh to fantastic, those small changes are what makes a big impact if you get what I’m saying
For speakers totally agree. You can absolutely kill a setup with a poor room or environment, or make a cheaper setup sound fantastic with a killer room. But when you get both a killer room AND killer setup, then it’s magic lol. I also see some grab high end components all willy nilly not really paying too much attention to synergy and end up with a lackluster result, certain pieces can be considered good on their own, but what really matters is the final result of the entire chain, all “good” pieces without synergy isn’t going to give a good result
This is only with headphone setups, things would change with speakers, but no this was only headphone setups. I will cover the actual chains at a later time for the 3rd part. Perhaps I should get started on that lol, but I already know I’m signing myself up for a lot of writing lol
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Wow @M0N thanks for taking the time to do this, invaluable info. Will read thoroughly when back home
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I see, thanks!
I completely agree on the synergy. I was merely interested if you had anything like an absolute gold standard combination for personal reference. Much like I’ve used my Harmony Design stack as my personal reference. This is also where I have that amazing synergy too, when I was experimenting with other DAC and amp combos I just couldn’t match it. Not even combining a newer “better” DAC paired with the old Harmony Design Ear90. Which ultimately led to me sending in the whole rig for a trade and upgrade. Never been happier!
That nagging feeling that just follows you along is sometimes enough to destroy all enjoyment of an otherwise great experience. So yeah I agree. It’s just a bit of my inner skeptic to ask how quantifiable some differences are, since (as an example) you often see superlatives of how much of a world altering experience a feet / spike replacement can be on an amplifier, lol.
Happened to my brother with a pair of Focal speakers. The room was shaped like a straight Tetris block and no matter how you placed the speakers it sounded horrible. Great speakers though in a better shaped room.
My wish one day, haha. The house is going to get some renovation at some point and I really want to get an LP player in the room for some extra enjoyment of all the music I have available.
Haha, looking forward to it.
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It’s already been said, but I appreciate the time you put into this. It was an interesting read, even though I am unable to afford any of the things mentioned (at least at this moment in time).
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I mean, you were kinda on a path to downgrade from what you had lol, so I’d make sure the dac is actually “better” first before lol, make sure you are going for better and not marketing
Kinda that kinda not, like even listening from an open mind still these subtle changes make a big difference
Doubt it’s world altering, but it does have the ability to be substantial. You have to remember that as you get more experienced and into this hobby different things get more important and your skill as a listener increases so your sensitivity is higher than the average joe
Lol
Almost halfway done atm? Edit: nvm
Very important words here…Ignorance is bliss in this hobby, once you can hear something you were unaware of before and understand what you are hearing it is then difficult to forget or move back into that little bit of ignorance and you now have to deal with what you know…for better or worse.
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First of many questions coming up. This was very revelatory to me. You’ve got USB regenerators chained together. Is the intent here to first isolate the USB signal and cleaning it up, then switching from USB to AES or BNC and then to be able to split the signal into the various DAC or you actually see improvement from further “cleaning” the clock signal in each step?
Thank you BTW for this write up, there’s content here to scrub through for DAYS, to be hones half the brands you mention are not even in the regular high end vernacular since most of the reviewers or things we’d likely read about simply don’t include the stratosphere equipment you share here.
Is it fair to say that once you get to that stratosphere level it no longer about good and better but more about preference?
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Removed, may be rewritten at some point
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So with this setup, the JCAT is cleaning the usb from my pc, generally improved the sound a bit, then it goes into the Berkeley which converts to AES and gives a nicer quality signal, and the ATI is distributing it and further reclocking as well, although I can bypass that extra reclocking if I want. I do see a quality improvement from each step, but the largest differences were the alpha usb and the JCAT
I mean, that’s kinda a confusing question, as generally good and better would be based off preference. You could have a preference for a specific signature and not care about technical performance as much, or you could have a preference for a high level of technical performance and signature isn’t relevant. All depends. Generally at this level, you are just looking for something that best matches your preferences whatever they are, and something that also has excellent synergy with the rest of your system
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You’re going to hate this… but I’ve learned and I’ve seen first hand the impact of synergy. But it seems to me that there’s the two types of synergy, the physical kind, where the technical capabilities of a component match the best operating window of another component and magic happens. But then there’s almost “intangible” synergy where the sonic signature either compliments or clashes with the sound preference you’re chasing. e.g. bright cans paired with a analytical neutral amp and a detailed accurate mid forward DAC. Could be somebody’s heaven or somebody’s hell. Solely based on preference and not technical (hw) compliment.
So the you’re going to hate me part, is I’d love to get your insight, on synergy at large and to a degree, specifically of certain pairings and why they work versus why others don’ despite both pairings costing the same 20k. Perhaps a couple of examples of why something has that synergy and why something doesn’t.
I guess that’s the frustrating part in the hobby, that some things REQUIRE trial and error and that’s where mistakes start to pain the wallet. TBH, there’s probably only a handful of people on the planet that would have listened to the stable of DACs you’ve outlined here, let alone articulate the nuances.
Thank you again for sharing the writeup.
EDIT: 
I was responding your your response from last night and didn’t read your new post. Please disregard half this post as you anticipated and answer my yet unasked question!
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Another question, how would your analysis differ if you’d used speakers instead of headphones? How would you have gone about it, and would there be a divergent point?
It’s always been easier for me to notice change listening to a stereo instead of listening to headphones. Just less dramatic, more nuanced. Maybe that’s my answer right there, that the speaker and room interaction add too much of a variable that doesn’t come into play with headphones.
Curious about this one.
Imho the synergy in your second sense may depend on your subjective preferences. Some may prefer a more balanced sound by pairing a warmer amp with a dryer DAC, some may prefer pushing for a single direction by pairing a warmer amp with another warmer DAC (assuming all are on the same technical level) so pairings that sound great for one may not sound as great for another