Wow @M0N great work! I like that you kept the write up clean and succinct yet standardized across the board!
The only notable Dacs I can think of that are missing are:
Ypsilon 1000
DCS Bartok
Chord Dave
Link Klimax
Esoteric
MSB
We can’t expect you to have access to every TOTL Dac now can we?
A few questions…
Can some of the best at the $5k (ish) price point compete with anything on this list or is price truly a differentiator or class/performance? I’m thinking Holo May, Sonnet Morpheus, Lumin T2, Lamp Amber 3, Mytek Manhattan etc…
When you did your Dac evaluation was is 100% on HPs or did you include 2 channel listening as well?
2b) If Hps only then what did you use for evaluations (Susvara + Phi TC + D8k pro?). If 2 channel what was your primary speakers used for reference?
For HP amps did you use a mix of tubes and SS if so what were your primary amps? (OJI + Egoista + Primavera?).
I do like the Linn klimax dsm2 katalyst a decent bit, but there was never something that pulled me in to buy one strangely enough. I will be curious to hear the organik
So I’ve liked them but none stood out as super incredible to me outside the grandioso d1x + g1x combo, but that’s a lot to plunk down for lol
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of trading all these in for a Select II, but didn’t end up doing it for reasons. But I’d love it have one once I get past my mental barrier lol
Not from my experience no, perhaps outside of the concert fidelity (which would trade blows in things like detail and technical performance but not organicness or refinement as that’s just on another level in comparison)
You can find the information you are looking for in the 3rd part of my comparison that covers synergy and system setups
That is going to be one hell of a WTS post! I mentioned a day or two ago that you may be one of a handful of people in the world to have critically listened to this many TOTL DACs, and of those, not sure how many would have been motivated to the point of actually writing their thoughts and observations as succinctly and clearly as you have. Kudos my friend.
I have seriously got to stay way from any purchases but I have decided to sell my P car, so maybe I’ll treat myself to something “nice” when the car finds a new owner.
All are already spoken for surprisingly lol (since I somewhat gauged interest to people I know a week prior, and I’m trading in one of them to a dealer to fund the digital upgrade), but I did negotiate with them so I can hold onto them until I get my new desk digital setup in, just to try
The reason I don’t do it is that I don’t have a setup nice enough to really get what that thing can offer, the rest of my setup would be a substantial bottleneck to it, it would have to go on speakers, and I just don’t have a setup capable enough at the moment
I mean yes and no, personally I’d still call a 2k DAC high end, it can just go a lot higher
I don’t know if I’d base perspective off this thread lol. The title for this thread is misleading at best, 4/5 words listed in that title are a lie, the only truth is that it has dacs lol. It isn’t short, it’s more than just high end, and it’s only somewhat a comparison. But I wrote the title before I wrote the rest of the thread, and never bothered to change it lol
A few questions on synergies… I understand that with 15 dacs, 12 hps, 10 amps, a few sets of speakers you get into 1000 permeations possible and the usefulness of comparisons get lost.
So to keep it general… Lets say your fav is the Aries Cerat and the most detailed is the Mola… Do headphones in general start to become the limiting factor/bottlekneck in the chain? Where the Phi TC and Susvara can no longer scale… You would need step up to some $100k+ Pairs of towers to get any incremental benefit?
I know you may not be a “stax guy” but do you think the 009 / 007 and a kgss and bhse would be able to take advantage of the details/technicals of these dacs more than planars/dynamics?
I would disagree, having more chains allows one to get a much better grasp on potential synergy and get better insight into how the dac actually performs, by allowing for more data points and different experiences to help one to mentally nail down what the dac is doing on it’s own
The aries cerat is more detailed than the mola mola from my experience, but ok continuing on
Yes, this is really reaching the limits of how far these headphones can scale, moving up any further isn’t going to be worthwhile for headphones I think. I do already know I am hampering the true ability of some of these dacs restricting it to headphones, but that’s also exactly why I wanted to evaluate only with headphones, to see how things would end up coming out
Sure, those are very revealing of the source chain and picky about that, I think they can scale just as much as some of the other headphones (I do think the 009 would do a better job of that than the 007). But do I think they would be able to scale much higher than stuff like a 1266/susvara or mysphere/utopia? No actually, it all depends though on the chain and also what your priorities are, but from an overall sense I don’t find the 009/007 to be on a massively higher scaling level from more traditional planar or dynamic
I agree with your take that more data is better but that becomes more valuable to a specific person’s situation. My point is that with a 1000 permutations of combinations in your comparison that synergies become nearly impossible to nail down for all… It’s akin to boiling the ocean…
I liked how you handled it though where you gave 3 different chains per dac to show people the flavor of what the chain produced so they people could attempt to follow in your footsteps.
I know the Amber 3 won’t really hold a candle against the GG2, but it gives me a lot of confidence that the designer really knows what he is doing and trickles down his findings. It allows me some insight in what a high end DAC can do and fortunately fits all of the traits that I prioritize. I also appreciate the attractive Trade-in program and everything combined has turned me into a fan.
I’ve been impressed with most of lampizator I have had or heard, I had a Big 7mk2 and traded up to the golden gate 2, has been pretty worthwhile for sure, and a solid jump each step up. And while the amber 3 doesn’t really touch any of these dacs, it still is damn sweet and very compelling for it’s price (it’s not really made to touch any of these dacs anyways, but it does get the trickle down tech from them)
I really appreciate you providing the glossary, too. Some of those terms I’m still working on understanding. I can read the words but it doesn’t always click. “Texture” was an example for me. I never really understood what texture meant in a sound sense until I heard good examples of it. Now that the connections are in my brain, I can hear it much more easily. The next one I need to work on is probably tonal density. Do you think terms like “full”, “rich,” or “thin” are used to describe tonal density? Or are they more frequency response terms?
That’s a big problem lol, some of this stuff there really isn’t any easy way to explain until you hear it yourself (goes for almost everything in this hobby anyways). Texture is a tough one since it’s fairly absent on most midrange to lower end gear, and you only get a taste of it when you start to move to entry high end level, then it starts ramping up from there
Those can be used, although that can also tie into other aspects depending on how it’s used. I don’t think it’s all that much of a frequency response or tonality term (but I have seen people use it this way), since you can have a pretty full sounding analytical signature, or a leaner or thin warmer signature. But typically people do associate fullness with warmth and thinness for brighter leaning things. But it doesn’t have to be that way
All good points. I think confusion also arises because there is a lot of overlap in the terms. For example, good timbre requires good resolution, and appropriate level of dynamics, and enough speed & control to get the driver to behave appropriately. Then timbre gets even better as texture improves, and so forth. And then all of that has aspects that exist in the time domain. So it seems that describing an audio piece as good at ____ also requires it to have some level of competence in ____, ____, and ____.
Yes, but you can still have specific characteristics shine more than others even if the recipe is all there. Like how you can have a dac with very fast perceived speed but actually not that resolving, or a dac sound organic but not realistic (but typically you don’t have a dac that sounds realistic but not organic), or have good texture without having good large scale control. All depends, lots of things that go into it. I just have to find somewhere to separate characteristics since it’s lazy to just say it all boils down to time domain, even if that’s what I personally think in the end.
Everything ends up feeding into each other. I’m sure it’s a game of compromises designing a dac, so generally I’d assume that designers have to make a choice for their priorities, and the designs they come up with may maximize specific aspects over each other, even if those aspects are all linked, so it’s not a guaranteed bet that if one dac can pull off one aspect it will naturally lead to it being as fluent in the other
I like that you kept the write up clean and succinct yet standardized across the board!
