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
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
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
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)
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
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