Gustard R26 - good but not the one
I have owned a Chord Qutest for quite some time, maybe 5-years. I power it with a SBooter power supply and feed it USB from a SoTM SMS200 Ultra with SPS500 power supply. Overall it sounds great. It's been a great purchase.
But 5-year old DACs are getting long in the tooth. As Ferris Bueller said, "digital tech moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
So, I've been looking at new DACs as a possible replacement. It's tough because the Qutest is pretty darn good for it's price and bettering it takes a leap in spending.
The Gustard R26 R2R DAC has been widely praised all over the internet and it went on sale 10% off the other day (8/26/2023). So, I picked it up on Amazon with free Prime Shipping and 30-day free returns.
This was more of a learning experience than anything else. I'm sending it back 3-days later, but I wanted to say it is a fine sounding piece of equipment. IF I had not spent a long time with the Chord Qutest I would have been over the moon for the R26. I did run it continually for the 3-days it was here - not fully bedded in, but close.
It's well built, super sturdy, easy to live with, great sounding and very versatile. There was not a huge difference from the Qutest, but the Chord was just that much better to my ears and I don't want to spend $1,460 to get not quite as good sound quality.
The streamer was super convenient and sounded fine. Not SoTM great, but certainly sounded fine.
It has one flaw. when you switch inputs, and there are lots to choose from, it totally drops the input you've been on. You have to reestablish the entire setup in your player. Using Roon > HQ Player that meant going into HQP's preferences and selecting the Gustard anew.
So, that's my take on the Gustard R26 - very good but not Qutest good.
Congrats on moving up the Chord chain. If you liked the Qutest then this is the best path forward. To be fair, I don't think anyone had issues with you not preferring the R26. It's just that you never gave it a fair chance (i.e. putting more hours on it) to start with. IME, R2R dacs require even more burn in time compared to other topologies. |
The thing to remember about Chord is that its an oversampling DAC and its built in oversampling is pretty good. To do a real side by side comparison for full potential of an R2R DAC like Gustard R26 one should use HQPlayer at the internal 705/768 rate of the Chord DAC, vs depend on the “comes with” over sampling limitations. |
Way late to the party, but an FYI for anybody considering the Gustard R26. 3 days is not nearly enough to break this thing in. When I got mine 2 years ago (as word of mouth was just starting to go nuts) I decided to try this out as it was less than half what I was looking at with Denafrips and especially Holo. For the first few days, I thought it was ok, possibly better in the mids than my post-divorce "emergency" cheap AF Topping D90, but not amazing. I had 30 days to return it, and was starting to read people thought it needed at least 200 hours of break in. So, I let it run 24/7 occasionally checking in. After about 5 days the etch was gone, and top seemed a lot more open. I A/B'd with my Topping to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. After a little over a week, the main characteristics remained, but it was much, much more open and had incredible heft making my Focal Kanta No2's grunt with gusto. So really after 10-12 days it was 90% broken in and I was no longer concerned about my 30 day return window. It improved a bit more after that, but nothing to remark on. At the time, I felt for $1600 I'd be looking at a replacement by now. Funny enough, not a whole lot has changed, the R26 still tops many lists. I demoed the Denafrips Venus in home before the Gustard and was pretty much sold, but prefer the Gustard and glad I took the risk. It's got a bunch of stuff I have zero use for, but for somebody that wants a flexible DAC with other features, hard to beat. I'm looking at getting my hands on a LAiV Harmony next, the build piques my interest, and again, $2700 beckons the cheapskate in me! BTW, I mostly listen to my analog front end, I'd love to get something remotely close for digital. But again, I have a lot more invested in the analog side. having been collecting LP's since the late 60's. |
@uncle_monkey I'm very happy with my R26. I remember reading a review where the reviewer had the filter set to Slow. That's my least favorite. I have mine set at Fast. It doesn't sound as good on Slow. Maybe if you're system was on the bright side. Imo. The other night I switched to NOS mode. I hadn't really tried it. I like it set there. |
