The DAC Scam - Almost everyone believes the hype

@bigtex22 what DAC do you use , what have you compared it to and how did they not differ?

@partslinger My apologies for reading into your post. I haven’t heard the Dragonfly so I can’t offer an opinion on it. That said I’ll offer the following. My 1st separate DAC I purchased years ago cost around $350-450. I don’t recall if it was an entry level PSAudio or Music Fidelity, regardless it sounded better or more to my taste than the DAC in my Arcam CD player. I eventually replaced that with a $1600 April Music DAC that was across the board better sounding. However, I did buy a $1200 Blue Circle DAC that I enjoyed listening to more. After awhile I decided to purchase a tube based DAC , the 3 or 4x more expensive Modwright Elysee . It was significantly better in SQ and soundstage while comparable in to the Blue Circle’s sonic tone. I then decided to try an Aqua LaVoce S2 that had an even wider soundtage than the Modwright but I found it too detailed and it left me fatigued listening to it beyond an hour and a half. I sold that off. A Mojo Evo Dac in the cost bracket of the Modwright i found hit the mark on my listening taste. Two years or so ago I auditioned a $15K Tron Signature DAC that has outstanding presentation, but has a very detailed sound that just doesn’t suit my listening taste. Instead of the Tron d I went with a Neodio Origine S2 CD player, the DAC of which more suits my listening taste. The point of all of this is from my perspective you’re not going to be able to know and decide if anything else better suits your listening tastes until you hear them for yourself. The narrative that it’s just ones and zeros so it doesn’t matter is nonsense. DACs don’t all sound the same. Ignore the cost element, how much you spend or not is immaterial. I’d suggest that you rather focus on what sound signature you prefer , seek out the ones that match that, and then decide for yourself if it is worth it to you or not to move beyond what you have.

@partslinger I have both a Dragonfly Black (V1.2) and a Red, and I have tried both with and without an AudioQuest Jitterbug. I have compared them to both Chord QuteHD and Chord Mojo2 DACs. I used these with headphones and in a near field 2.1 desktop system with modest AudioQuest and DIY cables, not high end but in near field at low to moderate volume, revealing, especially of soundstage.

The Dragonfly Black sounds nice, warm, moderately quiet, inoffensive. It was a great improvement over the sound cards typically available in most laptop computers when it was first introduced back in 2012. The Dragonfly Red was a significant step up in terms of detail on offer with it’s ESS chip, and greater amplification on tap to drive a greater variety of headphones. To me the most noticeable difference is the way the Red lays out a pinpoint soundstage. But I also find listening to the Red to be fatiguing in my system or with headphones compared to the Black. The Jitterbug scrubs off some of the edge on the Dragonfly Red, at the expense of detail. The Jitterbug with the Black is just too much softness for me.

In comparing the sound that I get from the AudioQuest Dragonflies to the two Chord DACs, there is no contest. The detail on tap with both of the Chords connected to my MS Surface laptop with a decent USB cable exceeds both of the dongles and while the Chords might give up a touch of the ESS (artificial?) “air” of the Dragonfly Red, that is more than made up for by precise leading and trailing edges of notes, tonal accuracy across the frequencies, ability to distinguish individual instruments and voices, and perhaps most importantly, complete lack of listening fatigue. Both AudioQuest devices sound “grainy” in comparison to the Chord DACs, and the Red is boarding on downright edgy.

Given measurements from ASR show that the Dragonflies measure well below some of the current inexpensive offerings from the likes of Topping or SMSL in terms of signal to noise ratio, you can probably do much better than the Dragonfly Black for not a whole lot more money in desktop packages. If portability and built-in headphone amplification is important, my experience is that the Chord Mojo2 is a significant upgrade, and there may be other products that would improve your experience for less than a Mojo2 (the Mojo2 is much better than the original Mojo, so I would only consider the “2” version). If you have the budget, there are much better sounding DACs for racks at many price points, but something like the Denefrips Aries or Chord Qutest will offer you very different flavors and can be found used now for near a grand or less.

As always, YMMV,

kn

So much fail in this thread. "It's all ones and zeros". That's like saying "it's all just grooves in the vinyl" and that all cartridges sound the same. In both cases there are a lot of important parts and design choices between the input signal and the analog output that (can) have a significant impact on sound quality.

If you're happy with the sound of your $200 DAC and truly believe more expensive ones will all sound the same... I guess you should consider yourself lucky!