Best DAC for my situation...Read on!

uberwaltz,

After direct comparison, many prefer to leave their preamp in the chain. I recommend that you do not sell your preamp before doing the comparison yourself and not even to rationalize the purchase of a DAC by assuming the sale of your preamp.

Dave

uber,

Sounds good. Up to recently, I recall that you were set on a one-box solution?

Since you brought an external DAC into the fold of consideration, I will give you my 2 cents. Having a MW SACD player and a pretty good DAC (Exogal Comet Plus)/Aurender N100H music server combo.

I have fallen hopelessly addicted to the Aurender/Comet combo because streaming music from Tidal is so easy and the sound is pretty good. Also listening to hi-rez downloads from HDtracks, etc. ups the ante to excellent sound quality. I mean EXCELLENT sound quality.

My MW5400ES still sounds better for critical listening, once the right tubes and umbilical/power cords are in place. Image palpability and soundstage size, depth, and layering are in another league. The intoxicating wetness and buttery even-order harmonics/richness of the tube sound can only be produced by tubes, simple as that. Friggin’ incredible dynamics and bass power/slam. Bye-bye grain and edginess. Music.

My MW player only plays CD and SACD. Speaking of that, I was confused by your comment above, "However that only has an effect on Redbook CD playback." ??? Anything you play through your Oppo (CD, SACD, other digital input) and output from its analog outputs will benefit equally from the Modwright power supply, analog section, and tube output section.

Bottom line: If you are planning to do a lot of streaming or need multiple digital inputs for using other sources, Keep your Oppo for other duties and invest the money in an Aurender/DAC-of-your choice combo. Way excellent streaming with the Aurender. So easy to build custom playlists.

If you do not plan to predominately listen via Tidal (I think the Oppo can do streaming via its USB input??), the Modwright mod to your Oppo is the way to go for ultimate digital sound quality IMO unless you get into the $$$ DACs.

Dave

Reasoning vs listening. The only way to know what you prefer is to listen for yourself.

Dave

Completely agree shadorne. :) The plethora of gizmos to address issues with USB transmission is a glaring example of adding band aids in an attempt to address endemic weaknesses of the technology as well as in component design/implementation, but I think there is more to digital cable influence than that.

Re: the influence of different digital cables on sound quality, as I think you have said before, this has a lot to do with the quality of the particular component’s input design and the clock implementation. Perhaps most sensitive is the component’s USB input design/implementation (vs S/PDIF or AES/EBU) as there are more potential demons to conquer with USB data transmission. Overcoming potential noise issues with USB’s unique use of the 5V power lead in the same cable/connector interface is a challenge with USB and also that most USB designs are asynchronous, thus depending on the data transmission integrity of the source and the cable to avoid data loss that impedes the DAC’s analog reconstruction process. Maybe completely jitter related as you say a lot but I am not convinced that there is not more to it than jitter. Things like impedance match/mismatch, RF/EMI rejection and signal isolation to eliminate noise riding on the signal, etc.

Anyway, very nice to agree on a balance of reasoning and listening as the superior path to better results.

Dave

Why would he do that when he just bought an Exogal DAC?

Dave