From the picture posted with the lid off I’m surprised that they didn’t change that to be a dual mono design. I see two transformers which is what reminds me of that architecture.
I’m having a hard time trying to envision what this Dac would sound like as I haven’t heard a dac with a CS chip since the Audio Research Dac 3 MKII (I think). And that dac had the coloration of tubes as well. Still, your SMC is going to be totally old school compared to the Mola Mola (assuming that your limiting the sample rate sent to it as well) as it will upsample everything back to 32 bit and apply some heavy filter processing afterwards.
Is your goal just to compare the two for kicks or to ultimately decide which one to keep? I don’t know anything about your system or musical tastes but I know which dac I’d be betting on! I’ll be interested in hearing about the results of your test.
Simple device for downsampling?
Is there a device such as a DDC or something else that can be placed in the digital path prior to the DAC and set up to downsample all higher resolution digital music files from Tidal, Qobuz, and local storage (all played through Roon) to a maximum 16-bit and 44.1 or 48 kHz, to facilitate a DAC with those playback limitations?
Many Tidal/Qobuz files are already 16-bit, 44.1 kHz but almost as many are higher resolution files and I am unaware of any options within Roon to limit file resolution sent to the DAC. Back when I used a Mac mini and one of the player programs, I believe we were able to select the output sample rate but now that I solely stream stuff thorough Roon, I am not sure how I would do that. Thanks for any helpful suggestions.