Dark Horse DAC

@nniss

Thanks for your candid impressions. My Doge MKII (I think) is getting close to being broken in. While changing things around in my system I also added 10 Synergistic Research HFTs and settled in last night to some interesting Electronica and then some Flamingo/Classical guitar. I know it can always get better, but I had to ask myself just how much better does it have to be. 

just to set the record straight, what i said was the doge 7 had weak output voltage from the rca and xlr jacks in my experience... i had two units, both with the same problem, so my conclusion was this was a design flaw, and not a specific unit defect -- in both cases, in my hands, the units had oem modern production chinese tubes, not os or nos upgrade tubes

this said, if the doge dac pleases others here, then that’s just great...👌

@jjss49 my apologies, I didn’t realize you were an owner. My concern was non-owners dismissing it out of hand. Yes, I think the nos tubes juiced mine up cause mine is louder if anything than my other dacs. I didn’t particularly like the balanced outputs either but it was because it basically made the dac too bright. The unbalanced sound perfect though.

@Brauser I know where you coming from because the Doge 7 mkii is my reference and I too wonder how it could be any better. There’s a guy that reviewed three different tube dacs that preferred one called Audio Note I believe and of course everyone says Lampizator is the best. Another observation I made was the Gustard makes an annoying noise between songs where Doge is perfectly quiet and smooth. The Doge is much better and definitly worth the extra 500 bucks. I’m guessing anecdotally in my case, the tube dacs are the all around more impressive tech than the R2R ones in terms of realism.I should note for full disclosure my interconnects are just blue jeans unbalanced so far for the Gustard and have much more expensive liquid unbalanced interconnects that came in a hazmat case on the Doge. If I switch out interconnects and hear a difference I'll report back.

 Changed my mind on the value proposition. If I didn't already have a Doge I 'd pick one up before they ran our. Until I hear something better it hard to quantify but if any one of these is try a giant killer it the Doge imo