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Looking for a vinylesk sounding DAC

I cannot say I wasn’t satisfied with my system.

Laptop (Quobuz Studio) - > Schiit Bifrost 2 - > Ocellia Reference RCA - > Werner Acoustics, Selene (active tube preamp using two VT-231 from RCA) - > passive preamp - > Ocellia Reference RCA - > First Watt F6 dual mono custom built - > HEDD Audio’s "Heddphone" / Hifiman HE 4

From the beginning I started to built it I had a quite concrete idea of what it should sound like in the end: vinylesk without using vinyl. It took me a while to get there and now I really thought I got it: Due to the F6 the outcome is brutally powerful and incredibly fast while the tube stage adds lots of body, depth and a rich organic undertone. Finally the RCA’s from Ocellia were adding the fine raffinement and a nice holographic soundstage. Nothing smears, in just every situation everything stays transparent, well controlled/articulated and the separation is just excellent.

BUT when listening to streamed vinyl I still feel the need for action - I just want EVERY track from quobuz to sound like this. Please take just some seconds and listen to this:

https://musicandvinyl.blogspot.com/2020/08/haruomi-hosono-from-aegean-sea.html?m=1

There is just MORE elasticity, MORE tonal density, MORE plankton, MORE concentration to the point, MORE light-footedness and MORE palpability (compared to a "disdainful" quobuz stream). Do you know what I mean?

I still think and hope a new dac could be the nirvana-solution. But which one would manage the job to sound just like vinyl (99% would be ok...)?

Happy to hear your suggestions!
barrista0611

Showing 3 responses by cleeds

cleeds
6,072 posts
 
relaks
... Any stream is worse than a dedicated server ... Streaming is always susceptible to network lag, latency, interferences, and mains noise.
It sounds like you have some pretty serious ISP and/or network issues. Most of them should be resolvable. You may want to consider using a caching streamer, such as Aurender. That might cure some of your streaming issues.
cleeds
6,072 posts
 
relaks
... Qobuz stream SQ is just adequate, no more than that.
Really? What streaming service do you think offers better SQ?
... download a good hi res file from them. It should sound way better compared to the streamed one ...
Why? Aren't the two files identical?
cleeds
6,072 posts
 
audio2design
Where you hear MORE elasticity, MORE tonal density, MORE plankton, MORE concentration to the point, MORE light-footedness ...
Huh? Elasticity? Plankton? I don't hear those things at all when listening to LP.
... I hear MORE wickedly high noise floor, MORE compression, MORE distortion, MORE loss of low level detail, MORE loss of tonal balance, MORE fake "space" coupled with LESS instrument separation, and more unwanted/unnatural sibilance ...
Huh? Wickedly high noise floor? Fake space? Unnatural sibilance? I don't hear those things from LP either.
As for compression: I've found most CDs are much more compressed than their LP counterparts.
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