Thoughts on the Gustard X26

The Gustard X26 Pro is a slightly warm DAC that is not extremely detailed like some of my other ESS DACs. I used it with a bright and detailed headphone, and it was very good.

I sold it to buy a Musetec 005 for about 2x the price. That DAC is smoother sounding and overall better, but the Gustard X26 Pro is a very good DAC at that price range.

I have a Gustard x26 Pro and find it an excellent dac for all my digital files, I find it very natural sounding which is what I care about, I currently use it with my downloaded files and JRiver to stream content in DSD (up-sampled by JRiver up to 11.2 DSD) which is as close to my vinyl system yet. My previous dac was a Teac UD-501 which I also used at 5.6 DSD using JRiver with good results (now in my desktop system).  My steaming is limited to 192/24 bit which I leave as is. I also love the dac with my newly purchased Audiolab CD Transport (44.1 non-upsampled). All the input and filters, which I continue to switch depending on the recorded material, provide good results. I leave the dac in non-oversampling with all my inputs as this does not seam to add anything to the natural quality of the music that I notice. I was tempted to try one of the popular R2R dacs but decided to wait a while and enjoy my existing gear for a while. The dac upgrades are coming fast and furious! 

I have it and I have the Gustard R26. The R26 is better.