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Does a Tube Dac make sense?


I’m  in the market for a dac since I bought a Musical Paradise MP701MKII Tube Preamp few months back, does it make sense to buy a tube dac? The seller Garry is suggesting to get the Musical Paradise MP D2 MKIII which is a tube dac with a AK4490 but can be upgraded to AK4499 but I’m leaning towards the RME ADI2 which is almost the same price as the MP tube dac. I’m finding it hard to justify a $1k dac but I have read a lot of forums that suggests the RME or the SMSL M400 and Denafrips Ares II but I’m a sucker for vu meters and spectrum analyzers but if the MP tube dac is a good match for my MP tube preamp I’m willing to give it a go.
stibin

Showing 4 responses by djones51

djones51
4,947 posts
 
No, tube DACs make no sense at all but buy whatever you want.
djones51
4,947 posts
 
The question was, do tube dacs make sense, not can I buy a dac with a tube to distort the sound to my liking. The whole engineering concept of a DAC is to convert the digital to analog as precise without distortion as possible. From that perspective adding tubes and other filters to mess with the output makes no sense. If you want colorations, to me it makes more sense to buy a transparent dac for $200 and do the signal degradation with preamps or amps or EQ. It’s cheaper and in the OPs case it makes even less sense he's already using a tube preamp.
djones51
4,947 posts
 
In properly designed DACs there is no audible inherent distortion profile. 
djones51
4,947 posts
 
Every DAC has one signature sound
No they don't. If a DACs noise and distortion is so low it's beyond human audible threshold it's considered transparent. I've heard quite a few DACs over the years and when sight was removed from the equation I couldn't tell one from the other as long as were not DESIGNED to have a signature sound.
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