Needing DAC Advice

I pair my modified Directstream DAC with an Audio Research Ref 6SE pre. 

The quality of the SDM and a very low jitter clock is just as important as the output stage. I use a Denafrips Hermes DDC to connect the DAC to our streamer.  Best I have ever heard from all DAC's we compared it to.  Very realistic and dynamic.

I think I'm alergic to ESS Sabre dacs.

Tried reviewed and recommended ESS dacs like Yulong, Nuprime, SimAudio, Auralic Vega and others and while I tried to like them, none sounded very musical to me.

My Hegel HD30 Dac on the other hand had an AKM "Velvet Sound" DS chip and it sounded very good.

Had PS Direcstream Mk I and Mk II Dacs and they sounded ok but their FPGA designs seemed to leave detail on the table when I compared it to the Vega G2 which was highly detailed.

Finally found the Holo May (R2R) dac and it seems to have great detail while preserving musicality across the board. Just seems effortless and stays out of the way. I'll note that this dac has a very good class A output stage.

So, some dac architectures/implementations simply may not work for your ears. Luckily, the used market is quite good right now - have fun!

@torontodt 

Agree. The PS Direcstream Mk I and Mk II in stock form do need more detail and better imaging performance.  With the proper mods and custom nickel audio transformers it's a different game. The SDM is programed in the FPGA. No off the shelf DAC chips are used. These DAC's convert all incoming signals to 10x DSD then to DSD256 for the bitslinger to pass to the audio transformers via 8 high speed opamps.

(Took the week off to do a little skiing...)

Thanks for all the input, much appreciated. To update, I just replaced the preamp-amp interconnects from Signal Silver Resolution to Mogami 2549 Y cables, added a second Pass X150 amp, and vertically bi-amped the SL3's with Canare 4S11 (from Analysis Plus Ovals).

I apologize for the scientific methodological faux pas of changing more than one variable at a time but I'm too old to crawl around making connections multiple times. I'd been planning for this change long before I started questioning the Benchmark DAC.

Result? More. Of everything. Full spectrum improvement and way smoother, very musical. Bass and mid-bass are amazing (I need to dial in my subs: they're too much now), sounds like the bass player is set up in a corner of the room. Highs are maybe a tad rolled off but all there (or maybe just shaded by the fullness in the mids - I need to listen to this for awhile to decide). Not to exaggerate, but the system sounds fundamentally, profoundly different. The Mrs noticed; she's a music lover but not a critical listener. 

This is still with the Freya in passive mode. So the only changes were to add more power (bi-amping) and changing speaker cables and interconnects. I'm not a believer in cable magic so I'm hesitant to give those changes much credit. Which I guess means the extra headroom is the difference maker. 

Bottom line, I don't have a problem with the Benchmark DAC, at the moment. (I was really leaning toward trying an R2R or one of Schiit''s DACs (reasoning that there has to be some synergies between the Urd cdt and their DACs - as an engineer, that's the way I'd do it.) But now I don't notice the DAC and I'm pretty sure I did before.

I'll spend some time with the system like this. Then maybe I'll do as others have suggested and try the preamp modes I have.

 

@jk_richards Are you working on mods for the MK2.  It seems like it would be a good thing as long as the mods didn't interfere with the software upgrades but if you strictly upgraded hardware I don't see how it would affect it.