Relaxed/Analog sounding DAC for under $10k (used or new)

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

@chayro - I will look into that thread, thank you!

@veroguy - interesting, I have not heard of those. Will take a look!

@sls883 - I did get to hear the new LTA DAC at SWAF a few months ago. Sounded pretty nice and was pretty shocked at the low price point. BUT hard to fully critically evaluate a DAC at a hotel show setting.

@zlone - Will look into them. The DAC1 looks interesting.

@soix - Lampizator is great at the high end - I really like the Poseidon DAC but it's quite beyond my means! The 'lower end' Lampi model I have heard - the Baltic 4 - left things to be desired. I suppose, hearing the Poseidon first and then the Baltic, it's easy to just compare the two and just notice the shortfalls of the much cheaper model haha. Good to know about the LTA trial.

@glennewdick - the chord dave is a DAC I've seen mentioned a lot, but I admit I have not looked much into them. Will need to give it a look!

@larsman - The holo may has seen a lot of hype in the review landscape, but I can't say I've ever seen one on demo, though my show experiences are limited.

@benzman - yeah, that is what I've read about the T+A - it is best suited with DSD, where it can outperform more expensive DACs. I don't really have any intentions in trying to build a DSD library, since my digital chain is exclusively for streaming, so I'd rather have something that is tuned specifically to provide its 'best experience' with USB/PCM. It would feel a bit odd to buy a DAC at this price point and then use the lesser configuration, at least to me.

@steakster - thanks, I am fairly confident it is the DAC that is bordering on the slightly bright side of things. I've spoken to another owner of the DAC (there aren't many of us!) who experienced some of the same brightness. Don't get me wrong - it's not incredibly bright to where I'm desperate to replace - but it's on the bright side of neutral for me. If I use oversampling at all, it makes it exponentially worse. It pushes mids and highs to a point where sure they may be very detailed and open sounding, but it's quite unbalanced and ends up making vocals very sibilant where they may not have been before. Of course, when criticizing gear, we're often focusing on magnifying little negatives and they can come across in writing as a lot more extreme than they actually are, so wanted to clarify a bit that it isn't anything extreme, just on the brighter side of neutral in my system and I'd prefer on the warmer side of neutral.

I am considering a future upgrade to an Innuos Pulsar streamer from my Zen MK3, but it's not high on the priority list right now. I do want to stick with Innuos though as I really like their Sense program. I already have a LAN filter in use that I've had for some time, and have tested with and without and it has no impact on any of these perceived small sound issues.
 

@audphile1 - The input impedence of my linestage is 50 kOhm, so I'd assume that wouldn't be the issue. I did recently swap all of my interconnect cables to Triode Wire Lab spirits, and those made a nice improvement in my overall sound (in both digital and analog chains).

I don't experience this same slight imbalance on my analog playback, so that narrows it down to the streamer and the dac. The streamer did not have this issue with my previous dac, but introducing the new dac and living with it a while is when I started to notice it, especially with longer listening sessions (the first month or so I was very busy with work so was limited to an hour or two a day at most).

I really, honestly, just think that the DAC isn't the best synergistic match with the rest of my system, not that the DAC is 'bad' or anything. That's just how it is sometimes and that's totally ok. I don't want to try to force a square block in a round hole, so to speak, when the solution might just be to replace the unit with something that works better with the rest of my gear. Of course, I will need to demo options in my system, and that is absolutely a must for me before committing to my next DAC. Won't know til I try!

And yeah. I suppose the whole 'wanting digital to sound analog' chase is silly, but *for me* that really just distills down to looking for slightly warmer, natural, non-fatiguing sound. A lot of high end 'hifi' these days tends to overemphasize detail retrieval over all else and it's often very fatiguing for me - especially since I'm often listening my entire work day.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far (either for specific gear or possible other avenues to look into)! I appreciate all the feedback.

@audphile - I do not use the TWL power cables currently. The speaker cables do not run bright in my system. I used the mapleshade double helix for a short period to test and THOSE were very bright. They were very open, but the brightness with those was quite pronounced to me. The TWL by comparison is full and much more natural to me. Granted, I do indeed have SET amplification and a tube line stage, so it works well together. This pairing was done before I made any DAC changes, so introducing the DAC is what introduced the 'complaint' over time.

I agree about the upsampling. Just not where this DAC shines at all.

The brightness is slight usually, but there are occasions where the top end distortion is pretty rough to where I need to turn down the volume quite a bit. Some of it can probably just be chalked up to mastering on those particular albums for the here and there borderline unlistenable distortion, but there's always an underlying 'treble bias' regardless of what mode I use or files I listen to, exacerbated by using upsampling or with bad recordings. If I had a streamer with a coax output, I would try that input instead, since it may be just be a case of the DAC's USB input not being great, but I don't currently, which is why I stressed optimization for USB input on my original post.

Got some interesting suggestions so far. I also got some DMs mentioning some things as well, so some good starting points!

I appreciate all the of feedback so far! Been busy coordinating an upcoming move so haven't had a whole lot of time to check in lately.

Seems like the Bricasti M1 and Tambaqui are recommended quite often at this price point. The issue with the latter is the lack of black case. Unfortunately, I won't even be able to consider something that isn't offered in all black. Weird hangup, I suppose, but its a matter of WAF, so to speak.

Chord DACs from my understanding tend to be a little more 'hifi' sounding and not really a relaxed feel to them. This is at least what I've gathered from a lot of reviews, various forums posts, etc.