Weiss DAC204 Review and Measurements

I appreciate @purr1n spending some time with this DAC and doing measurements/getting a thread going. I have been using a Weiss DAC204 for about 7 months now, and while it started as something I just grabbed out of curiosity to use on my headphone/nearfield office rig, it has become the DAC I use in my main system with Enleum AMP-23r and Klipsch Forte IV.

DISCLAIMER: "Review" ahead is not the most technical, but more a narrative of my journey with this DAC and why I enjoy it so much. I love this DAC and am not afraid to shout it from the mountaintops, so expect a positive biased take.

TL/DR: Throw away your preconceived notions, this DAC rips. If you want to forget about your gear and go for a straight injection of musicality into your veins, be sure not to miss the loaner on this one.


My journey with the Weiss DAC204
I gotta admit I approached this DAC with a lot of apprehension. I was doing some exploring of DACs after selling my May with the plan to downgrade my office rig. It was beyond the budget I planned on, it is DS and uses ESS 9018, and up until this point I had usually been a r2r/multibit guy. Well, some of the review hype was starting to roll out for this little DAC and a local dealer was willing to grandfather me in at the pre-price hike price so I decided to go for it.

To say I was surprised by this DAC would be putting it lightly. Unpacking I was thinking, did I really just pay $3k for this little lightweight chassis DAC with ESS 9018 chips and switching PSU? But I am a minimalist aesthetic guy and thought it actually looked quite nice in my rack at that time. I paired it with my Whammerdyne Circuit Salad and LS3/5a, and was immediately captivated by the performance I was getting out of the combo.



In this system just running the Weiss with the stock switching power supply I was left wondering if I might be crazy about how good it sounded, it defied the expectations I had of DS and ESS DACs. What I was most struck by was the absolute lack of edge or fatigue for the sound, while it still sounded precise and layered. The stage felt just right and realistic, creating a sense that I could swim around in the details. I was also utterly mesmerized by how decoupled music sounded from my speakers with this DAC. Imaging is so spectacular that even though I use my LS3/5a extreme nearfield, you would swear there are no speakers, music is just there in space. Granted well positioned nearfield and perfect sweet spot generally give a good sensation of that, but it had this quality more so than any other DAC owned/tried before or since.

It really has the ability for all preconceived notions and nervosa to fade away listening to it. It is giving it to you in a perfectly well-sorted musical way that makes you wonder what else you could need. Now putting a critical lens and comparing it to say the modded PS Audio Directstream MK1 I am getting acquainted with right now, yes you can fault it as not a resolution king, or a variety of other slight technical shortcomings or nitpicks. But I never find it is the type of thing you would think about when listening. And that is what ultimately has me loving this DAC, it is a DAC you want when you don't want to think about your gear. It feels like it removes a layer between you and the music as all good components should.

Well after falling head over heels for this DAC, I decided I must be wasting it in my office and I better think about having it make a permanent move to my main living room system. I had been still exploring what my long-term plan here was, I have a lot of multipurpose demands of this system as the whole family uses it and it pulls TV duties. While I sorted things out though I had been using the Hifi Rose 150B both as a streamer and with its built-in DAC (ESS 9038pro), and I was happy with it, to the point that I had not been in a hurry to add an external DAC. In comes with the Weiss and proves to me how wrong I was.



The Weiss paired with the modest Bluesound Node X on streamer/HDMI eARC duties proved to be multiple tiers above the Hifi Rose 150B. It was like all the fatigue has been stripped out of the system. I had attributed some higher volume levels shrillness and smearing to horns/the untreated room/etc, but the Weiss was just so much more adept and composed. It was back to that same sensation where I felt like I was just being left with the music no matter what content I fed it. It was revelatory. I was worried about pairing it with the USB output of the Bluesound Node X, concerned it would handicap things. Well in relatively, yes and no, I will get to that. But It was clear that around the same price point, the Weiss+Node absolutely stomped the 150B.

I am an audiophile who can never leave well enough alone though, so after reading a lot of "you haven't really heard this DAC until you use it with an LPS" takes I decided it was time to go for it and I bought a Plixir Elite BDC. And yep, it unlocked another level of this DAC, pretty much across-the-board improvement. The immediate obvious improvements were the blackground and better detail presentation. What was really impressive though was it did not fundamentally jeopardize the non-fatiguing musical nature of the DAC while giving it a technical bump that some folks may feel it needs. The stage got bigger in all directions, layering was more delineated and holographic, speakers disappeared more, the phantom center image became better, bass tighter. I could go on. I truly agree with the folks who say you haven't heard this DAC until you run it with an LPS.

"But Inoculator, how could you kneecap your system by using USB out from a Node". Well here are my findings on that point. Yes, this was slightly compromising my system, but also leaned into what I think is its hidden weapon. I was able to mitigate some performance struggles of the Node by doing the PD Creative LPS mod and running it with a Plixir Elite BDC. Yes, it was overkill, but it made a noticeable difference. More confident-sounding, less strain, and removed a tad bit of digititus I would not have known I was experiencing if I had not tried the upgrade. But why USB? Well, it is my understanding that the USB input on the Weiss actually processes through the built-in DDC even if you are not using the digital outputs from the DAC, and my pet theory is a bit of the special sauce is in the built-in DDC. Have I really put this theory to the test via critical A-B testing? No, but I know from briefly trying coax out of marginal streamers/DDC that I did not feel as grabbed by the music/presentation and moved on and clung to my DDC belief.

I found my primary DAC for the foreseeable future: this tiny unassuming little silver and black box. Now like most here, I am still trying other stuff out, but I envision the Enleum and the Weiss sitting side by side in my living room for quite some time. I agree with folks who feel this build quality does not warrant the price tag, but I am here to say the sound absolutely does and I would put this up there with one of the best DACs you can snag in the $5k and under price range.

 

@purr1n is it possible to compare with the Yggdrasil s? Either the miB of the Weiss look like appealing options.

 

It is true. There are many in the pro-audio group using the DAC204 for it's minimalist design and non-harsh sound. It is true the pro-audio AD/DA converters are mostly with an interface and not many use external DA converters, but some still do out of purity sake or just they don't trust the interface DAC. And pro's don't care about MB or DS, as they would probably want a DS anyway since whatever they are working on will also be mostly played on a DS system. They still want good resolution and clarity of course, which @Inoculator has found to his liking.

 

I believe studios use rack mount version of Weiss dac 1. Sounds fantastic (only heard prior version) and looks utilitarian. I have a suspicion that Weiss added $10k “audiophile tax” to the dac 1 and called it Helios

 

Most "pros" these days are home studios anyway and fewer and fewer AES. And rack mountable is not always quite a thing. Like the Lynx Hilo and the older Lavry DA10 and even the RME ADI-2. I would not expect Weiss or Benchmark in a big studio, but a home studio, for sure. Even that Lynx Hilo I would not be surprised to see it in a small mastering studio. And you have to remember, "home" studio to me means both a room in the home that has some recording or mixing gear as well as entire small homes that have been converted into studios.

Thankfully DAC's got cheaper and they can get good quality Apogee's in their Apollo interface.

 

Oh heck yeah they buy $3.5k DACs just like they buy 3.5K Focal or Genelec monitors. And heck yeah they pay for real Neve and API. Clients don't accept imitations. They look at those gear lists. Focusrite used to be the thing when it was the blue and yellow boxes. These studios will even pay to rent the high dollar stuff if the client wants it bad enough. You have not seen the places I have. Sweetwater sales guys have those dudes on speed dial. We are not talking about 20 somtethings with PreSonus gear.

The fact is that the Weiss DAC204 is a high dollar DAC with balanced out and that IS a pro feature that is almost always looked for. It is also a pretty high dollar DAC. Something Vintage King Audio would not carry if they did not think it was not for the pro-audio market:

https://vintageking.com/weiss-engin...terface-with-dsd-to-pcm-conversion-demo-deal\

Weiss also makes the DAC1, which IS in a rackmount and has AES inputs (3 of them). So the DAC204 is just seen as a smaller version.

So say what you want, I know different.

 

When I look at the DAC204 or any Weiss gear for that matter it screams OG Shatner Star Trek

 

Tangent but I've been hanging out around some online home recording spaces of late cuz I've been wanting to work on my singing and voice stuff on a modest budget but at decent quality:

This tracks with how I see that space. The vast majority of them see EIN like some folks see THD+N and feel dedicated preamps won't make a meaningful difference over the ones in a modest interface, never mind different converters.

Granted I don't have the trained ear lots of experienced musicians do and feel like a lot of what we take for granted in the playback hobbyist spare is actually counter intuitive on the other end.

 

Ok, you win. I don't know shit. You know everything.

 

Way back I posted a pic of Taylor Swift in front of a mixing console with a Fostex T_0RP on her noggin'

edit: my bad, not on her head

 

Why does this look Photoshopped to hell. I'm on my phone and don't have my glasses but does her left arm have two elbows?

Edit: never mind the orientation of the bracelets was messing with my eyes.

Also, I don't think the folks I chat with have ever won any Grammys or Oscars (LMAO would love to see the unredacted version ) but the "get nice monitors, be cheap with everything else" mentality does track.

@Azimuth feels like very different circles is all. I'm in the GarageBand/Reaper/Audacity group, you're dealing with the gear geeks, and Marv is stuck with the "get shit done" cliques.

 

Wait, are you talking about the modern red box stuff, or the early 90's Red series (like this stuff). I was under the impression the latter was actually somewhat desirable.

 

Oh c'mon, the 90's wasn't...