Wyred 4 Sound DAC1 or DAC2?

Now, that my W4S DAC-2 has arrived two days ago and has been playing continuously since, I'll try to help someone else probably having the same dilemma as me.
I won't be able to make a sound comparison between DAc-1 and DAC-2, for I never had them both, but I can compare them from the feature difference perspective and how they worked for me.
1. Asynchronous USB. It works superbly with the W4S drivers. I'm using Foobar with Kernel streaming. My previous PS Audio DLIII with Cullen IV mods never sounded as good via USB as via SPDIF coax. USB was always grainy. That forced me to keep my docking station (that's how I was getting SPDIF out) and to employ a decent digital interconnect. Now I am connecting the DAC-2 via its included USB cable and the sound was never better in my system.
2. Volume control. This is a killer feature. I always liked my Musical Fidelity A3CR preamp. I don't have the least bad thing to say about it. But I felt weird every time I thought about it and saw just an attenuator on steroids. This is because I have only one source, my computer, playing lossless flac 16/44.1 or hi-res files. The volume control in DAC-2 is the cleanest possible and working in the digital domain is superb. The Sabre DAC chip works internally in 32 bits, thus all samples, be them 16 or 24 bit in depth need to be upscaled prior to D/A conversion. The digital attenuation DAC-2 applies is in fact less upscaling. It is a lot of room, (48 dB for 24 bit streams and 96 dB for 16 bit streams), before any resolution is lost due to this process. According to Robert Harley, 20 bit audio is state-of-the-art and the last 4 bits in 24 bit processing are "marketing bits". This makes for, in fact, 72 dB of attenuation margin inside DAC-2 even for hi-res streams before any resolution loss occurs.
This is the theoretical support for what my experience with DAC-2 attests. The volume control of the DAC-2 works excellently even when paired with a 31KOhm input impedance power amp. In stark contrast with the bad experience I had when trying to feed the Benchmark directly into my power amp, DAC-2 delivers. DAC-2 directly into my MF A3CR power amp sounds significantly better than the PS Audio through MF A3CR preamp.
On top of this, the nice features possible when operating in the digital domain let me configure the volume control such as the max voltage outputted by the DAC-2 is 1V. This is exactly what my power amp needs to go full bore. Thus I'm not worried that I could ever overload it.

Thus, to sum up. The $499 difference between DAC-1 and DAC-2 allowed me to eliminate a coax digital interconnect, a docking station, a preamplifier, a PS Audio xStream Prelude SC power cord and a pair of Audioquest Columbia with 72V DBS interconnects. All this while giving me the best sound I've ever had in my system.

I know that DAC-2 has an improved power supply when compared to DAC-1. This should, at least in theory, result in better sound. Of course, I cannot say anything in this regard, for I never listened to DAC-1. But, for me at least, even if DAC-1 and DCA-2 sound the same, the 2 features mentioned above made the DAC-2 the better choice.

Of course, this is only my opinion.

Audiowoman,

Are you using the DAC2 as a preamp as well, going directly into a power amp, or there is a separate preamp in between?

My digital front end journey was not as long or high-end as others'.
Music Hall MMF CD25, then opamp upgrades to the CD player, then Music Hall Maverick, then Benchmark DAC1, then PS Audio DLII with stage IV Cullen mods and now W4S DAC2.
I've had better sound every step of the upgrade path and the DAC2 is, especially now, as it's broken in, by far the best in the relatively modest line-up I mentioned.
So much-much better...
I'm very curious to figure out how could someone come to the conclusion Yerude1 came to as well.

I know that this is off topic, for it doesn't concern the differences between DAC-1 and DAC-2, but I feel compelled to write about the DAC-2 and don't want to start a new thread.
Maybe this will help someone.
As it breaks-in, DAC-2 improves a lot, but the process doesn't seem to be on a constant way up! About a week after first hooking it up and not too long after posting my first impressions it started to sound a (significant) bit off. It was bright and the bass seemed to had been taking some days off. I even thought that I jumped the gun and got prematurely exited. But, thankfully, that was not the case. That was only a "break-in transition phase". The goods came back in a relativejy short while and now this DAC is the best I've ever heard by a country mile!
My humble advice: Give it the full 200 hours W4S recommends. It's not marketing BS meant to discourage returns within the 30 days trial period as many might think (and I was one of them). It's a fact, at least in my case it was.

Thank you, everyone.

Erikminer, I know you had a Cullen PS Audio DLIII which you sold. You sold it to me. ;-) And you're right saying that if I don't buy the DAC2 and go for DAC1 I will always wonder whether I did the right thing or not.

The market has spoken. I got an offer for my MF I said "yes" to. I am a very rare breed, I guess, I sell first when I upgrade, to avoid/limit the tension with my wife which hates my hobby (probably me as well ;-) )

But "Long Live Audiogon". If using the DAC2 directly into my power amp will prove not to be the right thing, there will always be a preamp looking for a new home...

Again, thank you all for your input.

Happybob,

The main issue, when trying to answer your question, is that, as I wrote in this thread, I first sold and then bought. Thus I couldn't A/B PS Audio and W4S DACs on equal basis.
The moment I got the DAC-2, DL3 and the preamp were gone.
Never got to run DAC-2 through the same preamp as the DL3. I noticed improved dynamics and clarity with W4S, better extension both ways, highs and lows and better imaging. The soundstage is so "real", I feel I could touch things in it. Also more texture and inner detail. All these quite substantially, not at all that subtle. And my W4S is still far from fully broken-in (still < 200 hours). As it breaks in, became a bit brighter now. I'm expecting from it to "shed off this brightness" as stated in the manual.
From my experience with Benchmark directly in my power amp, the MF preamp never worsened the sound, to the contrary, thus I infer that the improvements are mostly, albeit not totally, due to the DAC-2 itself. Eliminating the preamp and a set of interconnects definitely helped in immediacy and clarity.
Thus, as a guy with a modest system (MF A3CR power amp and Sonus Faber Concerto Domus speakers), I could still say "damn, this DAC-2 is really a nice step up from the DL3".
Again, this is only my opinion.