SBAF DAC Talk II

All true. We know good things can be done with it though. Convert-2 comes to mind.

 

The whole BOM of something like Convert-2 is perhaps 100$ + enclosure/buttons/connectors.
BOM worth of sticker tag only comes close with the discrete jobs, but then if it's not better why bother.

 

So what? Who cares what random old farts on the internet think? I don’t like any of those.

the price of electronics has nothing to do with build cost after a certain point.

Dangerous are hardly the first manufacture to do good things with the AD1955. It was in Apogee gear (miniDAC and DA16X among others) back when Apogee sounded good, had purple knobs, and wasn’t Apple only. Bricasti uses AD1955 in m1 and Lavry uses AD1955 in the Lavry Black DA10 and 11 DACs. All three of those go toe to toe with the Dangerous gear I’ve heard

Probably slightly more than that due to the case and power supply but Yep. I Haven’t heard anything discrete or resistor based that comes anywhere close to this stuff. BOM doesn’t seem to matter that much. The expensive discrete stuff is almost always ass and the cheaper stuff with similar BOM is euphonic with few exceptions. Below that, there is only codec chip slightly cleaner than a smartphone quality.

 

Speaking of dac chips, Cambridge Audio 851D has got the AD1955 as well and it certainly does not sound like anything special. Quite clean and no digitus, but lacks dynamics and accuracy. Does not compete with an Yggdrasil at all - more like a Modi MB with a heftier price tag. I guess the implementation matters a lot.

 

The Dave isn't really anything special and from the Yggdrasil A2 there are a lot of things it does which people don't like either.
Listening to the reasoning could lead you to taste differences.

I found some forum where they complained the Bryson amp stuff was too "musical" for them compared to the simoonaudio stuff.
Simoonaudio was just smeared all over across all their products for me and very limp, I attributed it to them liking a softer presentation, even though it's not certain.

Very easy a lot of these people have particular tastes and it fits their particular taste.

I say Dave isn't special considering it was the first high end dac I heard. Just really soft with hyperempahsised dynamic range.
The staging was weird, lacking depth while being really wide to emphasise any stage seperation.
Not as resolving as bricasti or even Yggdrasil for me.

Maybe it's magic is with speakers.

Even then this doesn't compare it to the spl dac+pre and you hsventh heard that yet.

 

I find that hard to believe. Did you listen to it at a dealer, you didn't actually own it did you?

 

Chord sucks. Deal with it.

 

I, for one, enjoyed the Dave very much but, like anything Chord, it's an (extremely) overpriced piece of equipment and I didn't felt like it was better than some other alternatives that cost a fraction of the price.
I can't really compare now the resolving part, although the weird stage presentation got me.

 

I've been considering the Emotiva PT-100 as a pre amp for my upcoming 2 channel adventure. The built in DAC is the AD1955. Has anyone heard Emotiva's implementation of this chip?

 

Upgrading or downgrading the firmware is as simplye as putting the file on a SD card, inserting it in the DAC & turning it on.
Don't see that as a negative, if anything it acts like a selectable filter like some DACs have.

I'd take that upgrade route over sending in the DAC to the company to get a hardware upgrade.

 

@LetMeBeFrank be sure to check how the volume control is performed. DC-1 was colored there with the digital control chips. Looks like a cool buy.

@purr1n Emotiva DC-1 was decent but not 3x as good as a Modi 2U (in some ways worse) and not even close to the Apogee and Lavry stuff. Emotiva products are all hit or miss or colored and a weird price bracket. The staging on the DC-1 sucked and it never opened up

 

Why the hell do you need to upgrade a dac or need selectable, worse-sounding filters? It should just work and come sounding best out of the box. Upgradable analog section what the hell is that? The NE5532 has been used for what? 30 years now? Who the hell needs custom underwater filters like the RME? OCD losers needing to dial in the fish tank to their K-pop inbetween showering after every piss they take. That’s who. Don’t be those guys. Don’t be Stevehoffman forum dwellers hunting down the only Led Zeppelin lps cut from a 14th generation tape dub for the most saturation, warmth, and high end loss that they need to not set off their incontenent bowels the moment Jon Bonham hits the snare. Stuff sounds like what stuff sounds like. Accept it. Rolling PS Audio filters becomes like smelling your own poop and comparing it to a stool sample chart to rate it one through ten on solidity, etchedness, color, and saturation.

 

Wait, weren't you advocating the Bricasti DAC just a few posts back?
That had a major upgrade, where you had to send it in to get newer & better upgrades.

Unless you think the non upgraded Bricasti is the superior one.

 

I think this thread should be renamed:

Psal’s DACsplotions! (and righteous indignations)

@Psalmanazar I would love to know your list of top performance DACs and top value DACs (just as a DAC, ignoring any included amp/pre/blow-drier/etc).

 

Lol no. Waste of time and undoable without back to back a to b comparisons. I am just shitting on PS Audio for selling crap. They are all more different than better dude after a certain point. Just buy something cool that works for you. I bought something that sounds great and is cheap as it sounds great, hits hard, and was cheap. If you’re gonna use it in your living room, then maybe treatment panels would be a better buy.

Yeah but it always sounded good unlike ps audio. And uh no. Saying something sounds good doesn’t mean “drop 5k in it” or that it’s actually better than also good stuff that costs less than half. These are all cheap chips on a PCB and Bricasti goes overkill to increase BOM cost (higher margins when sold to audiofools) then has discrete analog stage and external filter (still cheap parts) to get the special sound to sell it to you. You’re not really going to hear the 3 dB lower noise floor from the dual mono dac chips and 3 separate pcbs and three linear power supplies. You will hear the special filter and different sounding analog stage.

 

I've heard the PT-100 on a friend's somewhat average resolution setup (followed by Emotiva's A-300 then PSB X2T towers), I'd say it does the job with decent resolution and good timbre but sounds a bit closed in (admittedly, his room setup is far from great). For 2-channel purposes though, the features make it hard to beat for the price.

I do have a DC-1 (uses dual mono AD1955) which I hooked up to my Af for the first time today. It sounds a bit smoothed over transient wise, a bit lacking in microdynamics, bloomy in the bass and like Psal said earlier, stage is closed in and there's not great layering, but it does have a nice organic timbre to it and still has decent resolving capability. The volume control seems fairly transparent, but there's no bypass for it and the MUSES72320 chip has a gain stage, so it's a bit hard to know for sure. I have a coworker with a Modi 3, I'll see if I could trade with him for comparison purposes.

Sidebar, I would not mind sending the DC-1 out on a loaner.