DAC shopping - Trying to sift through the Hype. Can I trust the reviews these days ??

I believe Antipodes claim they found the secret sauce to make USB work however their gear is for me not inexpensive.  I think USB was a safe bet to allow for DSD and it is cheap.  The crazy number and variety of USB “decanters are testament to its flaws.

i use the Ethernet output of my Statement convert it to fiber, send it thru a Sonore Signature Rendu SE and then send it to the Antipodes S20.  It’s so much more musical than direct USB from the Statement to Goldengate even though it has the new JL Audio USB input.

You’ve sorted through two pages of posts that push to one core assessment of the “best” DAC ….. it depends entirely on your bespoke system .

So what makes a good DAC choice when you are assessing options blindly without personal auditions and just reading the confusing reviews….. or distilling down all these confusing and oft conflicting posts ?

Then think about the following DAC design and DAC build factors. .

Too many believe that the magic silver bullet to a good converter lies in just choosing a “high-end” flavor -of-the-month converter chip. Sure …. Top end chip is a first good step and many have it as their first marketing post, (with some competing OEM brand overlap / commonalities …) but it’s nowhere near the key core differentiation factors.

Rather, we know that the essence of the musicality also resides in the line signal processing stages, the power supplies (transformers, filtering, regulation, and preferably linear… ), the digital signal processing before conversion, the quality of the key components: clocks, transistors, capacitors, op amps, etc.

Build Quality matters and yes .,, it’s gonna intuitively cost ya more.Buying cheap here is a significant compromise.

PS.,,, Ensure you like the digital interface / app in a streamer section if it’s included in the DAC, Some of the OEM software choices are dodgy, and/or have crappy support , or worse. And some are truly excellent point and click delights.

+1 @akg_ca 

@fthompson251 lol if the Venus is even just a Terminator II the previous generation Venus and Terminator owners are gonna feel butt hurt. Not a good look for Denafrips long term IMO, now every prospective customer is looking at crappy resale value.

There are some reviewers who compare multiple dacs against each other. 
 

the reality is all DACs sound different and there is good and bad in each of the technology approaches. Avoid reviewers that seem to think a particular approach is better than others.