Experience with SoulNote Dac2?

@zlone - I've not yet carried all my office components to the living room to test with the QLN speakers. I did want to share my impressions after having the SoulNote D2 in my office for a week... 

Where the Merason dac has a natural smoothness, the SoulNote brings a vivacity, energy and gentle but muscular sound to it. It's been absolutley transformational. All genres sounds more engaging and real now. And this system sounds much better than systems I've auditioned at high-end audio dealers where I live. 

I honestly don't know how it would sound with another amp, but with this Luxman class A amp, I've now reached the "I'm done. I'm satisfied. My audio nervosa can subside for awhile." 

Again - I'm going to keep the Merason Dac1 mkii for the other system, but SoulNote has produced an exquisite piece of equipment. Little known brand, but amazing product. 

Wanted to pass my experience along. 

Thanks @bluethinker, I appreciate the follow up. I will do some more research. 

@zlone 

Your description of the Meitner sounds a lot like Merason, I would be a little worried it would not be a significant change. I never thought I would say it, but I think I want a bit more edge, but certainly not bright. 

I owned Meitner for over a year and have listened to Merason MK1 in a friend's system several times. I concur with your impressions. Both are polite to fault. After living with the Meitner MA3 for some time, I found that I was getting bored with the overly polite sound to the point that I stopped listening to digital altogether. Yes it was nice and smooth, but sometimes you want to hear that certain edge or energy (not to be confused with bright) when the fingers hit the keys on that piano or pluck the guitar strings. It was only after owning other DACs that I realized what I was missing.

Another point (not related to your post) I want to make is that the sound quality of a dac has very little to do with whether it's using a delta sigma, R2R, tube, or FPGA. After owning several dacs of every type, I firmly believe that it is the designer's skills, part quality and selection criteria, analog output section, and the fidelity of the clock that makes the biggest difference, regardless of whether it's ESS or R2R or tube or whatever. Just my two cents.

@arafiq Thank you for your comments,  very helpful. I see you have a Merging+nadac, I had not heard of that one, sounds interesting, though a bit out of my price range.

@arafiq I totally agree with your point above. We can make some assumptions based on the type of DAC being FPGA or ESS/Wolfson/Texas Instruments or FGPA or whatever. And sometimes there might be a hint of truth in there. But just as often we'll be completely off base. Any design also has analog output stage, digital filter, clocking, jitter reduction, and a bunch of other factors which contribute to the sound. Maybe the most important one is the power supply which is a huge deal in tuning an audio device. So two devices can both use the same ESS chip for example, and sound worlds different.

@zlone I am one of the seemingly rare people out there using the SoulNote D2 DAC. In fact I use two of them in their dual mono mode, so one handles each channel. The SoulNote DACs are amazing. I've had all sorts of other DACs including some really nice ones that I loved. None of them hit the spot quite like the D2 though. I started with a single one and later added another as an experiment. It makes a difference, in my system at least. I have also owned the original Merason DAC1 (not mk2 though), enjoyed it and found it to be a great value for the price. I still like the SoulNote quiet a bit more. Even when used as a single unit instead of monoblocks.

At this level I'm sure it is system synergy as much as anything else. If I swapped  speakers or even cables I could probably find a way to make the Merason more enjoyable than the SoulNote. Maybe.