Why you should spend most of your budget on your DAC

[M0N]

@zenstrata

Thanks for your thoughts! One of the reasons I mentioned this particular DAC a few times, is due to my personal experiences with it. I do try to only talk about equipment I have personally experienced most of the time. So that may influence what I post about. And admittedly, my personal experience with dedicated DAC’s is somewhat limited.

Makes sense, it’s just that in your initial posts about it, it’s hard to actually tell that’s the intent, the language you use and the more vague indirect statements and added information somewhat muddle what you say about it from your own experience, imo out of your first post, only one small section says that (basically about how you own one and it adjusts sound and doesn’t bother presentation, everything else just feels like nonpersonal selling points rather than your experiences with the unit), the rest of it feels like something that might be written to showcase a product rather than share experiences on it

@zenstrata

I felt it applied to this thread mainly because I wanted to push the idea that DAC’s should do more. So I used this as a demonstration of what DAC’s could be used for. Since it’s the only DAC I have personally used that could actually do much more than just be a DAC, that became what I talked about for an example.

That makes sense, however from the style it was written it imo devolves more into a sales pitch rather than an example, but again that’s likely just me. As a different example, imo the way you discuss the rme here comes off as a lot more going off your own experience whereas in this thread it feels a lot more like reading off a cutsheet or something. And the point you make about demanding more from dacs at higher price points just felt a bit ironic considering it was using an rme as an example which is why I think pokrog ended up talking about it

@zenstrata

I wanted a DAC to manipulate sound, without having to pipe it through a computer. Of course I do not have unlimited funds, so I spent quite a bit of time going through reviewers thoughts on the various units, before settling on this one.

Yeah there’s not too many options, another one is a weiss dac501 which is a lot more expensive (although significantly better than the adi 2 or any other 1k ish dac from my experience), you could have gotten a minidsp if you didn’t care about dac quality and wanted more flexibility eq wise but lacks things like a preamp, or even something like a qudelix 5k although using a portable as a desktop unit can sometimes get irritating. Guess that monoprice monolith dac amp with dsp also exists, but you are correct in that the pure features there aren’t many in the range that offer that, then again it also comes at the cost of sq but that should be expected to some extent given the tradeoffs/concessions that typically need to be made around the 1k price point

@zenstrata

I also recently felt burned by SMSL. Spending 500 dollars on a DAC and then having it die within a few hours after it arrived, really bugged me. Then the company i bought it from, tried to get me to ship it back to the SMSL factory in China, at my own expense I might add. This did not feel like a good move, and soured me even more. But luckily I had bought it through amazon, so I was able to ship it back to amazon for free and get a refund.

That is pretty garbage, and that’s always a risk that is taken with chifi stuff (although I think most companies will make you pay shipping there if something fails from my experience regardless of warranty)

@zenstrata

So my requirements became, a good dac that would let me manipulate sound output without relying on a separate PC to do so, and preferably NOT made in China. Then I ran across the ADI-2 and after watching quite a few reviews, it seemed like a good choice.

And what you got makes sense if that’s your goal, I just think if you’re going to take the stance of demanding more, it’s also important to acknowledge that demanding more in one aspect typically leads another to be neglected within a product, it’s all a game of tradeoffs and that’s important to convey imo

@zenstrata

Was it the best choice? But I do quite enjoy it for what it does in my setup.

There really is no “best” anything, but there are options that well suit a setup and those goals around the setups and options that do and don’t make sense. If you enjoy it that’s great, it’s just that when you try and represent it like the above it comes off as more as a sales pitch rather than an example from your own experiences regardless of what you might have intended