DAC Questions

My God, DACs are a rabbit hole! I was feeling confident about the Lampi, but now there are just so many choices. Geez! I guess part of the challenge is that as a relative newby to digital there is a lot that I don't know. I got a lot to learn. 

I’d recommend reading DAC reviews on soundnews.net as he’s done very thorough and comparative reviews on many current DACs.  Go by what the reviews say and by what you’re looking for and go from there.  The Lampi might be great, but you could also look at something like a Gustard R26 and get a DDC converter that’d let you take advantage of its i2S input.  Not an easy choice, but definitely worth looking further into.  

@mofojo Yes. A lot has to do with the word clock and like everything else is probably system/DAC dependent, but it seems by and large AES/EBU or i2S are by far the preferred connections into a DAC. I can only say that using a cheap 6” HDMI cable from Monoprice from the Iris to my DAC made a huge improvement in transparency, detail, and soundstage expansion to the point I’ll never go back. Just thought since we both had Musician DACs my experience would be useful. Maybe contact Musician and see what they have to say about the quality of their various inputs, but I know what I heard with i2S and, to me, it’s on a different level.

Wow little pricey. Will definitely look into them though. Thanks! 

@mofojo Yeah, but definitely a worthy and meaningful upgrade to look forward to in the future.  Musician gave us a nice i2S input and is a shame not to use it. 

@mofojo Yes, the Iris/Pisces don’t have SPDIF inputs.  You need to step up to the Musician Leo or Denafrips Hermes to get SPDIF, but they also have better clocks so should perform even better.  BTW, the Leo is less expensive unless you can find a used Hermes.  

@mofojo Congrats on the Aquarius!  I’ve got the Musician Pegasus and am also very happy with it.  Not sure what connection you’re using into your DAC, but I recently added a Denafrips Iris DDC that let me use the i2S input on my DAC and was a considerable upgrade in sound versus using SPDIF.  If I was you I’d seriously look at trying a Musician Pisces (very similar to the Iris) or the Leo (similar to Hermes) with a short HDMI cable as the i2S signal doesn’t like to travel far.  Just my experience FWIW.

The Lampi see as like a great choice if its sound qualities are what you’re looking for.  I’d highly recommend pairing it with an Acoustic Zen MC2 digital cable that I own and I think very much mirrors the sound of the Lampi 3 and would make a great match.  Here’s a used one that is actually the previous version (you can tell by the connectors) and should sell for about $250 for 1.5 m, which is a great length for a digital cable.  Seller is using the current version’s price as a reference, which is misleading, irrelevant, and overinflated IMHO.  I got a 1m MC2 of this version for $180, so the $400 he’s asking is ridiculous and he’ll never get it. 
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649812402-acoustic-zen-mc2-rca-to-rca15m5-feet-33500/

Last, if you’re contemplating streaming in the future, and you definitely should IME as the worlds of new music you’ll discover can be literally a reawakening as an audiophile (much of it in hi-res BTW), consider eventually moving to something like an Innuos Zen Mk3 streamer/server as you can burn all your CDs that aren’t available for streaming directly into its onboard CD drive (and not mess with integrate in external drives) and have access to all your music along with the world of streaming music from your chair.  You have a very good but very old transport that is only gonna last so long and can’t play hi-res music, so maybe it’s time to look to the future?  Just a thought, and best of luck with the DAC and other stuff moving forward.