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Looking for a tube (or tube sounding) DAC

I’m selling my Shiit Yggy and want to purchase a tube DAC as a compliment to my Primaluna Dialogue HP integrated amp. My budget is up to $6,000. I have a small assortment of music on a hard drive, do not have analog gear, no headphones, and listen almost exclusively to Qobuz through Roon. My list of DACs to consider so far are:
  • Lampizator Baltic 3 $5,900
  • Holo Audio May Level 3 $5,000 (not tube)
  • Tubadore III with all additions $2,300ish
  • Primaluna EVO 100 $3,000

Others I thought of, but are not tube are:
  • PS Audio Perfect Wave with network card
  • Mytek Manhattan II with network card

I live in a small town in OR and it’s four hours to Portland. I would love to hear suggestions from all of you. I’m looking for a nice step up from the Yggy. If you’re interested in my Yggy, it will be on Agon next weekend.

My gear:
  • Roon Rock via an Intel NUC that I built.
  • Ethernet connection to a separate switch, then fiber optics to an EtherREEN.
  • Bryston BDP-1 music server (might sell this too)
  • MiniDSP SHD for Dirac room correction
  • New DAC
  • Primaluna Dialogue HP integrated
  • Martin Logan Summit X speakers
  • Cables and interconnects are Acoustic Zen and Kimber.

Thanks, everyone!

Steve
smills59

Showing 3 responses by georgehifi

georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 


I've not noticed any issues with the PL and my ML Summit X speakers. Now maybe it's clipping and I can't tell, but I think if it is, it would be rare.
Not clipping, but becoming a tone control so it's not flat in frequency response.
This is what happens to most tubes when they see wildly varying impedance/phase angle curves, as the ML ESL's have which goes from 20ohm down to 1ohm 
https://www.prespeaker.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/martin-logan-summit-x-impedance-phase-graph.gi...

The Primaluna (black trace)
Into Sterophiles mildly hard simulated speaker load.
See how it varies + - 6db!! and that's going to look even worse on the ML's (So there it is again, if you wish to know.)
https://www.stereophile.com/images/1116PLPPfig01.jpg

Cheers George
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 


BTW I wouldn’t use tubes on ML ESL’s, from experience, they dip to 1ohm in the top end and your highs will sound recessed lacking in openness and sparkle.

Cheers George
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 


It all starts with the source, get that right and you've stepped part the way up the ladder.

If a dac needs a tube colorations to make it sound musical, it wasn't a very good dac to start with.
Have a listen to flagship discrete R2R dacs from Denefrips, Holo, MSB, Soekris, they'll give you it all in a big rich way and be sweet doing it, then it's up to the rest of your system amp/s speakers give what they give.

Cheers George  
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