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Empirical Audio Overdrive DAC: King of the Hill?

I received the Overdrive DAC a month ago and have been listening to it without a preamp interposed between the Overdrive and my Luxman M-600a monoblocks to Evolution Acoustics MMmini2s.

I have rarely heard sound this transparent and realistic. I am a strong believer that top priority in digital systems should go to transport/DAC. Not all DACs and digital transports are the same; there are MAJOR differences. The off-ramp->I2s->Overdrive front-end is one of the best I have ever heard; digital or analog. I am getting natural, organic, lifelike music I never thought possible from a computer front-end. Only the DAC 202 is comparable, but I don't think the 202 could beat it in a head-to-head match.
128x128dallasjustice
cerrot's avatar
cerrot
1,700 posts
 
Not sure of the dac but I have experienced the best digital bypassing my preamplifier as well. Both my esoteric x03SE and Berkeley DAC sound amazing directly into my amps.
goohsm
2 posts
 
do you really need off-ramp with overdrive?
i think overdrive already has an off-ramp quality(if not better) usb converter built in.
edorr
714 posts
 
There is no doubt the overdrive is an excellent DAC, as are the Berkeley, Weiss, PerfectWave MKII to name but a few that have been cited as "the best digital I ever heard" by many of its owners. Without a double blind shootout between the entire lineup all we can realy say is just that; "they are all very good DACs". Profesional reviewers are not very helpful either because they have a tendency to declare every single DAC over 5K "the best digital they ever heard" as well.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
"do you really need off-ramp with overdrive?
i think overdrive already has an off-ramp quality(if not better) usb converter built in."

You do not need an Off-Ramp with the Overdrive.

In the past, in order to get the best possible sound quality, this was necessary because the best clock, the Ultraclock, would not fit inside the Overdrive.

Now, the Superclock and Ultraclock have been replaced with our own dual Turboclock, which fits inside the Overdrive.

"Profesional reviewers are not very helpful either because they have a tendency to declare every single DAC over 5K "the best digital they ever heard" as well."

You can certainly do your own shootout with whatever DAC you can get. I have a demo available for this. There have been some direct shootouts by Pro reviewers however, such as the Dagogo review, which compares it to Berkeley, Weiss 202 and dCS Debussey.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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