I currently have a chord qutest DAC. I like it a lot, very full sound, accurate detailed and exciting. However, whenever I go back to vinyl (with a well-recorded nice pressing) I find the sound so much more satisfying. There is a warmth, yes, but there is a presence, a 'there-ness' that I just don't get with the digital. I'm wondering if an R2R DAC would get me closer to that? my budget would be around the same as the qutest. I was looking at the MHDT Orchid or the Border Patrol. Don't get me wrong, I really like the Qutest. I am thinking of putting it in the upstairs system to pair with the Node2i I have up there. Any thoughts? Will analog always just be a different animal than digital?
Currently in the main system I have a Sonore uRendu feeding the Qutest which is going to a LTA MZ2 going to a Pass XA 30.5
The stock tube works well, if you find it a tad bright (not always, some do), the Tesla is midway smooth, and the WE396 is even smoother yet was a tad too rolled off for my speakers but others love it in some cases with more forward speakers. A good cable from your player and XLR or SE cables back to the inputs on your helps too. Be sure to give it 40-80hrs burn-in for the tube, caps, to settle in and it opens up even more. Thumbs up!
@adam8179 -- awesome choice! I ended up buying the Audio Mirror Tubadour III, but Pagoda was a very close second. As others have mentioned, be sure to let it burn in for at least 50 hours before critical listening.
As others have mentioned, give it some time to settle in. I ran mine with the stock tube for quite some time before changing it out with a WE396A (D getter, JW military version). To be honest, I was somewhat skeptical and hoped the tube change wasn't a waste of money. I wasn't disappointed in the least. In fact, I'll soon be ordering another for backup. Best of luck. I hope the Pagoda brings some of that "there-ness" you're seeking.
In skimming this thread I didn't see them mentioned so thought I'd shout out to Kitsune' / Holo Audio. I first went with the Holo Spring Kitsune' edition R2R from a standard chip DAC and loved the improved sound. R2R for me until some kind of audio breakthrough happens. Since then I moved the spring to another system and got the Holo Audio May for my main 2 channel. Terrific sounding!
Yeah same, I borrowed an early Holo Spring L2 discrete R2R dac and was blown away at how good everything sounded from my CD collection, real "meat" on the notes, especially on the midrange, very dynamic and transparent, then I switched it to NOS mode and things got even better. It better my Linn CD12 R2R and that was very good.
After I sent it back to the the owner, I got myself a MSB discrete R2R and same thing again and have never wanted to upgrade the front end again. Note: these discrete R2R dacs show up CD transports, you need to have a good one.
So I got the MHDT Pagoda today and put it up against the Qutest. I know I need to let the Pagoda break in so it's not quite a fair comparison yet. It was very interesting. I like aspects of both.
The Pagoda has a fuller richer tone. More meat on the bones. The soundstage is broader. There is an analog character to it that is very appealing. Mids are rich and broad and colorful without any sense of bloat
The Qutest is more resolving. It's a leaner presentation. Going back and forth it feels like the mids got sucked out. However the highs and high mids are more present and give a much more 3D soundstage. The Pagoda is big but more 2D in comparison. The Qutest feels faster and more nimble whereas the Pagoda is like a big steak dinner.
I am quite shocked at how different these 2 DACs sound. I really like both but I am leaning toward keeping the Qutest in my main system as I miss the 3D soundstage that the Chord provides. I might have to sacrifice richness for soundstage.
My girlfriend who is also a musician preferred the Qutest
I'm going to keep breaking in the Pagoda and maybe roll a different tube in there at some point and see what happens. Thanks again everyone for your help!
I had similar issues with my Audio Mirror Tubadour III and started bitching about it too soon. After about 50 hours or so, the change in sound was so dramatic that it could have won an oscar. Hang in there!
Mojo Audio Mystique’ V3 + whatever number. It is a killer. As mentioned in previous posts, it just gets it right. It is freakishly dynamic, live, detailed and quick. The immediacy is scary. Music appears out of blackness and washes over you.
i remember reading one of the people posting here who bought one said they do have a (shortish) money back return policy - think it was something like 10-15 days
you wonder about break in... but better than nothing
I am looking for a DAC for a while too. R2R came to my mind. Orchid, Audio Mirror and Lampizator, etc. I considered Lampi first, then Lampi changed from R2R to DS and Amber III has very good review. Even their flagship has DS chip. I am confused, is Amber III (DS) better then their old R2R Atlantic?
don’t focus solely on the dac chip... the chip affects the sound, but no more than several other factors in what is in a certain dac
mhdt dacs are famous for this... they make 7-8 nos r2r dacs with different r2r chips but you swap output buffer tubes in any of them, you can make all of them sound different or alike from each other (not to mention parts upgrades)
I also use Chord Qutest for couple of years. I like it very much. It is a huge step compared to my old Care 303 CD player that use 1704 DAC chip. I improved the SQ of
Qutest significantly when I changed BNC digital socket to Audio Note silver RCA and started using NBS Signature cable. Thank a lot to @zipost suggested me to do it. Now CDs sound competitive to my vinyl setup. But vinyl still wons in terms of tone and microdynamics. But CD at least as good in presentation, soundstage, separation and other audiophile attributes. Did you compared your network streamer to good CD transport with SPDIF cable?
@hilde45 The Pagoda has a tube. Is there much debate about tubes needing break in? Mine definitely changed over first 40 hrs.
To add on to your point - It's not just the stock supplied tubes that take time settle in, the new caps inside need to settle in as well. My MHDT Orchid is very 3-dimensional, and deep soundstage. Upgraded it again after the first year, even better now once I upgraded the coupling capacitors inside to high $ silver-gold-oil Mundorf caps with Cardas silver soldering, and went with an ever better NOS Tesla tube to replace the decent stock tube. It now challenges DACs at 2-3x the price. Same can be done to the Pagoda. My buddy uses a Pagoda in a mastering studio.
Other trick I did to make Chord Qutest sound warm and smooth even on "white" filter with regular power supply, I added Furutech AC GTX-D(Gold) Duplex receptacle. This
receptacle makes sound more fat and warm in contrast to
Furutech AC GTX-D Rhodium that sounds more neutral.
The problem is a simple digital oversampling and anti-aliasing filtering (used in most DACs) is not accurate enough for music reproduction.
DAC without oversampling and Chord DACs with sophisticated oversampling and anti-aliasing filtering solve the same issue by different approach. The goal is recovery the original analog signal that was before ADC.
So one solution it do pure analog low pass filter. Other solution is to do sophisticated digital signal processing using modern powerful FPGA and smart algorithms. The question is what does work better?
I had a Denafrips Terminator (r2r) and recently upgraded to the Terminator Plus. I have had a Yggdrasil (r2r) and W4S DSDSE v2.2 (ds) dacs and the Terminator is in another league. FWIW I felt the W4S was the better dac. I added the Denafrips Iris DDC (USB to I2S converter) to try the I2S on the Terminators, the Iris was a game changer in my system. Denafrips considers the I2S the best input but have put a lot of work into their USB input. I wasn't expecting much from the Iris as the USB from my Innuos Statement was supposed to be amazing (and I thought it was). I have clock cables on order to clock the Iris with the Terminator Plus's OCXO clock. I have read the benefit is significant.
Lots of interesting views in this thread. Modern DACs have more than enough resolution in their digital filters to reconstruct the signal at higher sampling rates, well beyond the analog performance. NOS DACs are not accurate. They used to have wicked phase issues due to the analog filters now they just have wicked aliased harmonics. Pick your poison. A DAC can have a "voice" if you want that sort of thing. It can also be accurate. It won't be both. Buy what you like. Some of us like accuracy. Some of us don't. Many audiophiles claim to like accuracy but don't really. I would say the majority don't and would not know it if they had it, but claim to seek it out.
FWIW I used a Chord Qute EX DAC for years and, while it's getting long in the tooth, I still think it's a terrific DAC. I must enjoy artifacts considering an MHDT Lab Pagoda replaced it. Sounds great with Redbook.
It sounds wonderful to you and that is all that matters and yes you very well may enjoy those artifacts though depending on age may not hear the bulk of them. It gives a light and airy sound to redbook. Some love it. Embrace it but don't confuse it with accurate.
Accurate: meaning an engineering measured number...
accurate: meaning a natural timbre, a feeling of the real instrument for the human ears...
Accurate?
Or these 2 meaning of accurate we conflate them and accurate means first and last a number on a measuring tool...
My nos dac cost me 25 dollars new on a bid and the idea to upgrade it seems ridiculous to me ....
After 2 years i cannot fathom his limit they were not audible to me....This dac improve with my speakers and amplifier embedding controls installation...
I dont doubt that there is better dac than mine, i will call them not more accurate but more musical if they are better, for example the Denafrips pontus in NOS mode is certainly better than my actual dac at his price........ Accuracy without musicality is without interest for me....
« I have 2 masters et they serve me well: my ears» -Groucho Marx
« They are not masters nor servants brother, they are your friends»-Harpo Marx
I am sure you are not..... accurate in the technical sense is a good thing.....
accurate for my ears is also a good thing....
It is not a matter of confusion, it is a matter of assimilation between the 2 significations....
Nos dac does not mean inaccurate, unless we reduce accurate for my ears to accurate by numbers....
And sometimes techical improvement are not the "crux of the matter" for audiophile experience, especially at moderate cost....Saying otherwise and reducing the 2 sigification of "accurate" is misleading....
I have noticed that older audiophiles seem more attracted to NOS DACs. I suspect the artifacts compensate for loss of high frequencies that can give a sense of space to recordings. It bears out in the subjective opinions given.
NOS DACs are not accurate. They used to have wicked phase issues due to the analog filters now they just have wicked aliased harmonics.
I'd just like to point out that this is hopelessly inaccurate. The OOB (out of band) signals from a NOS DAC aren't 'aliased' rather they are images. Nor are they 'harmonics' rather their frequencies are related to the difference between the sample rate and the reproduced frequency. So for example with a 10kHz signal, the OOB component (image) will be at 34.1kHz (with RBCD : 44.1k - 10k).
It matters not one iota what I think a thing is. Aliasing is what happens when an ADC digitizes a signal with frequencies beyond half its sample rate. Aliasing has nothing to do with DACs its entirely an ADC phenomenon.
Took a look at the IEEE link, its entirely in harmony with what I'm saying here. To wit they say :
This paper is concerned with undoing aliasing effects. Such effects arise from discretely sampling a continuous-time stochastic process.
Accusing people of being deaf, especially old audiophiles, is not an argument because too much people are included; and assimilating numbers to phenomenon and reducing them to it dogmatically is more than bad science it is bad philosophy, ignoring the structural complexities of human hearing to reduce it to some very specialized engineering field concerning a very special kind of dac, is not convincing but reflect prejudices....
I make my own controls devices for the embeddings of an audio system with great results, even being old audiophile myself, with success... I bought nothing from the market except after hearing the results.... I devise my own electrical grid device, and my own mechanical control for the speakers, and the many devices i use for active acoustical controls and not only passive one are all homemade, then the "deaf" old audiophile i am smile at your dogmas by the number and this completely free accusation....
All that comes not from super hearing capabilities but from my listenings experiments for 2 years with my ordinary ears....Audio is NOT reducible to some engineering very specialized book about some very special kind of dac....I am perhaps deaf and old but not completely gullible....
Abraxalito made great remarks .... Thanks to him.....
Most audiophiles are old and here that is just fact. Older people have significantly reduced high frequency range almost as a rule. Again just fact.
You are literally anthropomorphising an electrical signal not to mention interchanging sound and electrical signals which is a false pretence.
When you pass the very significant ultrasonic content of a typical unfiltered or lightly filtered NOS DAC through a non linear system which all audio systems are especially at ultrasonic frequencies and with tubes, that aliases into the audible band. That is not theory that is simple fact. Also fact that noise / distortion can be pleasing to some and it has been shown, again fact that playing with noise and distortion can give a sense of space that is not in the recording.
Also fact that noise / distortion can be pleasing to some and it has been shown, again fact that playing with noise and distortion can give a sense of space that is not in the recording.
All signals that comes from a musician recorded in a studio to the ears of an audiophile(even a deaf one) sitting in his room, are a complex chain of transformations and an imperfect recreation of the original lived event....( and the recording room,the speakers , the microphone,the recording instruments, the electrical grid of our house,the mechanical embedding of our audio system, the acoustical complex setting of the room etc play an enormous role and all this is not reducible to high frequencies rendering by some dac, NOS one or not)
Speaking of the" pure reproduction" of this event without any qualitative transformations and with an alleged and desirable perfect quantitative reproduction is a metaphor that point to an "idealized" situation that can never be realized completely anyway...
Thanks for recognizing the fact that what you called distortion can be pleasing for some...." playing with noise and distortion" is fundamental and the complex trade-off management inherently linked to engineering art....Accuracy is important for correctly using equations in electronic engineering but i hope that all old engineers with experience use their limited ears accuracy also and i hope that they do not always equate pleasing with accurate in the mathematical sense.....Anyway,i know that they do, they are not all dogmatical "religious" zealot character.... :)
I will add that the concept of "timbre" in acoustic can never in no way be reducible to high frequencies rendering....
Then what is important is the accuracy of the timbre instrument rendering, not only the high frequencies linked to it....Timbre ask for more than 5 complex concepts to be defined and it is not even a total consensus in science about the relation between all these necessary concepts ordering because it is a complex phenomenon.....
The fact that some NOS dac can give a good representation of timbre is a common experience....The fact that some non NOS dac can give also a good representation of timbre is another fact.... This representation/reproduction of the timbre instrument or voices in a natural way is linked not only to the dac but MOSTLY to a great number of different other factors, some i called embeddings controls, and there are many others also....
« I prefer to anthropomorphize the world than simplifiying it too much»- Groucho Marx after a reading of Goethe
« Including oneself in reality is not rejecting reality, on the contrary, you are right brother»- Harpo Marx
« We cannot speak about a rainbow without including the man into the equation for example brothers» -Chico Marx
« A fact is NEVER only a fact, except for simple mind »- Anonymus
When you pass the very significant ultrasonic content of a typical unfiltered or lightly filtered NOS DAC through a non linear system which all audio systems are especially at ultrasonic frequencies and with tubes, that aliases into the audible band.
Again, misuse of the word 'aliases' - the correct term would be 'intermodulates'.
So I now do wonder, WHAT'S the bottom line of all this techno squabble? Is there a bottom-line? At all. CAN an R-2R DAC sound better than any NON-R2R one, due to its DAC construction - if the analogue output stages are equally well implemented? I'm sure this was the intended enquiry of the OP, no? This also given, that initial analogue/digital and microphone recording limitations are discounted for. M. 🇿🇦
There is no reason for an R2R to sound better or worse than a non R2R. It's all implementation including the up front signal processing. There is a reason why you may like or dislike a NOS DAC though and it is not because it is more accurate.
Thanks for this take. However, I have an R2R DAC (ML36) 20bit, 44.1kHz and an upsampling CDP (ML390S) hybrid, 24 bit, 352kHz. (I hope I got that right :)
So,... in short, I prefer the R2R item - by a small/tiny but important margin.
Why?
Somehow R2R is sounding more natural/harmonically more complete. Only referring to red-book CD reproduction. M. 🇿🇦
I've been reading through all of the post on this subject. Thanks.
Like many I also have an R2R DAC, the Holo Spring Level 1, but also have at my disposal other DS DAC's. CD Player has an Analog Devices chip, and Burr Brown on HT processor. They all sound different for sure. As often as not everything else being equal (if possible) I prefer the rendering of the CDP with Analog Devices chip over the Spring DAC.
The the big elephant in the room is, all music starts out as analog be it instruments or vocals and these analog signals have to be converted to digital. I know of no R2R analog to digital converters or have never heard of recording studios, or mastering studios using this technology.
The point is, even if using the subjectively best R2R DAC available, and that could be argued till the cows come home, no one will ever experience the full potential benefit of R2R DACs. From my perspective most musicians, recording engineers and others working in the industry consider audiophiles a bunch of nut cases anyway so its probably unlikely the demand for ADC with R2R capability will ever be designed and built.
ML36 is what 25 years old? In 2005 that would have been considered old tech and not nearly as good as new stuff. Suddenly is is great again? No.
Both your DACs are good but you prefer one. Much different implementations. One thing that has changed in 25 years is you of course if you are the original owner.
Personal preference which is impacted by prior experience, your specific system and environment and yes age.
Never discount flavor of the day and the impact of suggestion either.
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