New DACs High End Munich 2023

Another fan of Playback designs here

I traded an old DAC (the third DAC trade in) towards a dealer demo Playback Designs Merlot, must be 7-8 years ago now.  So far I haven't looked back. While other components have changed, I have not felt I need a new DAC yet.  If I was not now an older guy with limited cash flow, I would not hesitate to move up to another Playback Designs. As a side note, I had an informative and satisfying email exchange with Andreas Koch, the man behind Playback design (and the SACD when he worked for Sony/Phillips).  If a used Merlot were to show up, see if you can get it to try out in your system.  It was originally $6500, shouldn't be more than 4K now.

The Merlot marries perfectly with my Audio Research REF amp & preamp - at least to my ear.  Of course, there are so many other factors that your experience will probably be different. 

Should have noted that the Merlot is an FPGA DAC.

I haven't taken the time to look, but a used merlot could be a  lot less than 4K now.

I was surprised why this DAC did not take the audiophile world by storm. Maybe it was a bit too early in the digital world and we were not ready for it then? While some folks were enamored with it, but not a huge following like rest of the Playback design products.

try the Wyred4sound 10th anniversary dac, very analog sounding DAC, one of the reviewers put it up against his VPI turntable with a $5,000 Japanese cartridge and he said it was every bit as analog sounding, costs $4,500 US but I agree I have it in my system and it's the most analog sounding DAC that I've tried.