Add External DAC or Upgrade to a New Streamer / DAC?

good to see you back and contributing once again @soix 

op

My question is this. In order to achieve a marked improvement in digital sound quality (and being that I enjoy the look and interface of the Rose) is there an external DAC you would recommend running the Rose through (as cost effective as possible - pre-owned or demo preferred) or is there a Streamer / Dac combo product that would be the smarter upgrade move.

HiFi Rose RS250 (Quobuz - Roon - Ethernet - HiFiRose) which is fed into a PrimaLuna Evo 400 Integrated into GoldenEar Triton One.Rs Cardas and Wireworld interconnects and cables.

you would need to describe in some useful detail the nature of sonic improvement you hope to gain from the move you are asking about... your system has a number of arguably positive synergistic pieces in place... sharp sounding front end into a mellow-ish tube amp, into fairly well balanced speakers... so where you want to go with the sound?

there are several variables... one would be to remove the cardas cable and gain more transparency and apparent treble detail... another would be to go to a solid state amplifier to gain slam and cleaner attack in how livelier types of music would play

as usual the more info you provide, the better chance you will get useful, targeted advice on changing equipment cost effectively

@jdm11

i have not had a hifirose unit in my own system, but it seems that pretty much all reviews of hifirose gear points out that this brand of gear voices their sound on the leaner/clear/crisp side - this is also consistent with the typical sound of a dac section using ess sabre d/a chipset and standard solid state output stage implementation

given the above (and i agree it is more cost effective to upgrade the digital front end these days than a similar good sounding analog front end, so i support your choosing to improve the digital), i would suggest using your hifirose unit as a streamer and feed one of several possible candidate dacs

-- mhdt orchid (modded if possible, but the standard unit is perfectly fine to try)

-- denafrips pontus

-- audio mirror tubador

all three should have a notably warmer tonality, a richness to the sound, without sacrificing too much in the way of treble detail and effortless resolution compared to your hifirose dac section

each of the above appear on the used sites fairly often and can be purchased and resold pretty easily (if necessary) if the trial does not lead to a sound you desire - i especially like the orchid (or similar mhdt tube buffered dacs, they have several models) since you can affect the sound additionally through easy tube rolling

other point i would make is to make sure your internet feed is reasonably well cleansed coming to the streamer... there are plenty of threads on this on this forum, there are numerous cost effective options to do this

good luck have fun