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
You’re not wrong in it being preference in the end, when I think of synergy, it’s basically just how well do these components work together (with all sonic aspects playing a role), and how do they impact each other when coming to the final result. And that final result is preference in the end, but there are inherently some pieces that work together better than others at the same time regardless of preference, you want to find those pieces but one that actually matches your preferences. Some things may sound great and match your preference well in one setup, and move that to another setup and it no longer performs how you want.
Well you should have enough examples of what does have synergy now lol, but I can give a few examples of what doesn’t have synergy, and I’ll use the same headphone for consistency
Totaldac → Re-Leaf (in current drive mode) → Focal Utopia
- I was pretty surprised how bad this sounded, way too much bass bloat, treble gets really strange and disjointed, and presentation is skewed weird as well, not great. Basically plugging the utopia into like a crack lol. Obviously this was chosen knowing it would happen due to higher than normal output impedance + the more prominent bass of the totaldac, but it shouldn’t have gotten this weird
BAT → Allnic → Focal Utopia
- This wasn’t a bad pairing at first, but I noticed that it honestly kinda sounded slightly constrained and restricted overall, didn’t feel as dynamically capable, ended up having something off that I couldn’t put my finger on, might have something to do with time domain performance
Etalon → Mass Kobo → Focal Utopia
- While this did help take an edge off the mass kobo and add some nice body and warmth, this really ended up dulling things down, lacked emotion, which was funny to think since that DAC tends to add emotion in other setups
Waversa → Mass Kobo → Focal Utopia
- Another pairing with the mass kobo, so the dac is the only thing that changed. The waversa and the way it presents does not jive well with the mass kobo, this has some aspects where it sounds slightly disjointed and incoherent in presentation, slightly tonally off as well
While this is a different headphone and isn’t dac related, this was an interesting observation, with most dacs I threw at it this ended up happening. So, I have bricasti m28 monoblocks that are beasts, current for days, high quality, refinement, organic, etc. The susvara sounds great off them. But I consistently like the grandinote demone more than the m28 with the susvara. On paper, the m28 seems much more suitable, but I just really enjoy the demone monoblocks much more even though they are pretty much a similar level of performance because they offer a more organic experience with the susvara while even being more controlled in the low end with more grip, again not something I would expect
I would like to give you better examples of poor synergy with great components, but that’s actually somewhat hard mainly since I’ve specially optimized my system already to try and avoid that from happening lol
Yep, no real way to get around it
You’d probably actually see semi similar results in satisfaction, but a potential shake up for technical performance for the Oh Shit! category of dacs (yes I’m rolling with the shit categories), mainly because I have speakers that far outresolve what some of my headphones can, and also far more stress the dacs time domain performance which might allow some of the dacs to better flex their muscles in that range. (The reason why I don’t think the holy shit range would change all that much is because they are already so capable with headphones, it would be magnified with speakers and would potentially create a larger gap between the performance of holy shit and oh shit) But idk, I actually haven’t tried all my dacs on speakers yet, but I’ve tried all of them on headphones, I’d have to spend a few months screwing with dacs for my speaker setups to really give you a proper answer
I mean with speakers you are going to be adding more than a few variables
So coloration and voicing are important yes, you want to judge a chain overall and not as individual aspects, the final result is what matters, so mixing and matching around until have your desired preferences is typically how it works there. Perhaps your preference is an expansive yet accurate stage, you find an amp that has a pretty large and grand stage but slightly hazy placement inside, you compensate for that dac wise with something that focuses on a smaller yet more accurate and coherent stage, and perhaps you get your results. Or perhaps not, it’s hard to generalize and it’s honestly something that as @db_Cooper mentions, is totally trial and error, even things that should seem to work well sometimes don’t, or things that shouldn’t work do. It’s complicated lol
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I would like to request a few clarifications on how you interpret and define things.
Holographic: what makes a good holographic presentation different than having good spacial recreation and good accurate placement
Organic: Is this a combination of good timbre and accurate speed and decay? Hows this relate to realism in your words?
Great insight and descriptions and makes me interested in the offerings that are below this but reflect their big brothers.
Overall a 3/10 read as its missing the most important part, a ranking of how nice they look sitting in a sunny grass meadow. I did give a point back for the “Shit!” Rankings.
I would love this for the “entry high end” segment of 1-5k equipment but i also respect the time needed for this work. Not just for the thread writing but listening to what each piece really is.
Edit: i also see there is a part 2 and more to dive into, i did bot get there yet so excuse me if something was addressed
I, for one, would love to talk more about this, even though I know it has become a taboo topic in our hobby. I believe that we have the right community and attitude to be respectful and cordial about it, even though it is a polarizing idea.
Disclaimer 1: I am a believer in cables and tubes, even though I was neutral, yet open-minded about it at the beginning. With the equipment I have now, I can wholeheartedly hear that there have been differences and changes.
Disclaimer 2: Even though I can hear changes, I am not one that would recommend to another person to go gungho with cables. I have spent some money on cables, but it still consists of 1-2% of my allocated spending. I also only buy my cables used and thus save a lot of money that way. Due to the cost, I don’t see myself really buying cables new.
My question: At the beginning when I had entry-level gear, I could not notice any upgrade in cables. I was given an opportunity to demo speaker cables and felt like it did nothing to my setup. When I started to move up to mid-range, I started to hear some changes. I started off with a $40 USB cable for my Bifrost and was able to hear a subtle, but noticeable change. When I went up to a LampizatOr and a better DAC, I now can hear a substantial change.
My question is that when we are talking about these end-game DACs will the change of cables and tubes be an even larger change than that? I know that both of us believe that it should still remain a lower allocation of your funds until you do last tweaks, but how much tweaking can be done with cables and tubes?
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So personally I tend to use holographic and accurate stage a bit differently. When I mean holographic, think of a holographic picture (or a 3d movie). It’s got immediate wow factor, and is captivating to look at, but it’s not exactly realistic, you know that but still enjoy it anyways since it offers you a different yet desirable experience. When I say accurate, think of a normal picture (or a more traditionally shot movie), it may not have as much wow factor or as much immediate captivation, but it has much more realistic transitions and depth with more subtle information that can be lost on the holographic picture (or 3d movie). It’s one of those things where I think of holographic being more exaggerated or skewed in mainly presentation and spatial recreation to give it a more immediately impressive although not necessarily realistic result. Being holographic can help in adding more life and pop to otherwise underperforming recordings or other gear, but also may limit spatial organicness and accuracy in a high performing recording or higher performing gear
It’s a combination of timbre, tonality/tonal balance, tonal weight, and presentation mainly for me. For realism this would feed into organicness, but realism would focus more on having accurate transient response, accurate spatial recreation, and accurate dynamics to me at least. You need a high level of organicness to have good realism imo (the audio note is a good example of this, it nails both organicness and technical performance, improving it’s realism), but you can have organicness when you lack realism (the concert fidelity is a good example of this, it has good tonality and tuning, impressive timbre, solid tonal density, and an organic presentation, but doesn’t really have the technical capabilities to sound as realistic to me)
So I’m going to be a bit busy today, but I WILL try and cover those lower cost alternatives from the same brand in more detail, to give more insight into how they differ from their bigger brothers and their different needs and requirements
I might consider it, but it’s not likely to happen for a few reasons. Firstly, I don’t really have any of these dacs in this range anymore, and I really don’t know if I want to go buying them up again, so it would be limited to memory and greatly less informative than this one. Secondly, to be quite honest, it just isn’t going to interest me as much, I’ve talked about that range of dacs a fair bit now, and they just don’t really wow me in the same ways these do. I’ve had these higher end dacs for a bit but seldom discussed them at all, so I felt more compelled to write something mainly just for my own enjoyment
Pt2 had the shit scale, so you most likely mean pt3, but yes more stuff tacked on lol
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This is actually a very helpful response, thank you. It makes a lot of sense and I can draw real world example of this with the Philharmonic Audio BMR.
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Yeah, for the tubes, stuff like the lampizator for example differed a fair bit depending on what types of tubes were in there so I considered covering that, and with cables my statement of “better than bargain bin” was important as I can sure tell you things like Amazon basics interconnects weren’t cutting it here (neither were cheapo new production tubes for that matter)
Same, the 1-2% system cost is a reasonable figure to shoot for when it comes to cables, for tubes I’d say more around 10% of system cost for that budget
Well I wouldn’t call them end game lol (but a reasonable stopping point for me at least), but yes the typically smaller hardly noticable tweaks are decently magnified here, where you can pretty much tell when things have changed and what changed, and can play a role in capability. I don’t think these changes will make or break the system, but I do think they can help you tune to your liking or eek out more performance in your setup. I don’t know how I would exactly put a figure on how much can change, but I can think of that if I end up writing something that covers the tweaks
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