Under $1k. $999. I would pick RME adi2. I owned this DAC for a few years and it's hard to beat for the money. Under $5k. $3300 After looking at several DACs between $1500 and $6000 I chose the Lab 12 DAC 1 Reference. I love this DAC. Not feature rich , in fact it's pretty stripped down but sounds great. Can listen for hours without fatigue. The best DAC i have heard in person is the MSB Discrete. I would buy one if I had the means and a system that could exploit it. |
@oddiofyl @jrareform I agree with selecting the RME ADI-2 (used) under $1,000. Especially if it comes in an AKM chipset variant. What I’ve noticed is that any system improvement is picked up and passed along. Rather uncanny that way. With an ordinary USB cable, a significant improvement is available with DSD upsampling. Whether doing so with Audirvana or HQPlayer, it’s a serious sound enhancement. I’d love to see this DSD Direct upsampling option compared to others like the Holo May and Denafrips, as I suspect it’s right in the ballpark. Have yet to see such a comparison to date. Can’t speak to the 5K plus category as I’ve not had them in my home system. Hearing systems and DACs in other systems isn’t good enough for me to proffer an opinion.
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Agree 100%, especially T+A D200, which is a remarkable DAC. |
calvinj Under $1,000 - Denafrips Ares 15th Under $2,000 - Denafrips Pontus 15th Under $5,000 - T+A DAC 200 ($5,000 used), Weiss DAC 204 $3,500, Denafrips Terminator 15th (Actually $5,300) Over $5,000 - T+A DAC 200 $7,500, Weiss DAC 501 $12,000, Berkley Alpha DAC $11,000, Mola Mola Tambaqui $13,000, Mietner MA3 $11,000, DCS Lina DAC $14,500, and whatever Lampizator DAC you can afford |
