2. digital
  3. 180863-2019

Neutral Dac?

I’m curious to see people’s opinions on what they believe is the most uncolored dac? Every dac I’ve tried seems to be a flavor that deviates from neutrality in some way (smooths things over, too bright, too soft on transients, lacks bass etc...). Is there a dac that people believe gets all the fundamentals correct with leaving very little sonic footprint? What is the cost threshold needed to achieve it? I’m surprised at my own findings recently but really curious if anyone else has been searching for a fundamentally uncolored dac and what they’ve found.

   I realize the most obvious answer is "the dac with impeccable measurements" but I have also found some of them to sound unnatural (dry/bright).

schw06

Showing 1 response by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
6,508 posts
 

The neutral thing is hard… it is so associated with flat measured it gets the rap of meaning lean. 
 

So, for example, I owned a Audio Research Reference CD9 / DAC. If I characterize it’s sound, I would say it is detailed, warm and natural sounding. The reality is, tonally it makes music that sounds exactly like what I hear in the wild (real acoustic instruments as in the symphony and jazz venues). But I would not refer to it as neutral as I think people would think analytical.

I had a Berkeley Alpha Reference 3 DAC ($22K) to which I compared my ARC DAC. The difference was absolutely minuscule… but the ARC, was ever so slightly warmer and more natural. So both should be called neutral… but, I wouldn’t dare as once again conjure the feeling I would be calling them lean. 
 

also I helped choose a DAC for a friend and we got him a Yggdrasil. The generality is that it sound quality is competitive with DACs of roughly twice the cost… which puts it in the $5K competitive range. I also ended up buying a Gungnir for my office system. Hate the name (Schiit) but in the budget category they are really good values.

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