DAC comparison

Former owner of the DAC 7 and the Yggdrasil. Sharing more about your preferences, desired outcomes and system focus will be helpful.

@backdoor  That DAC was part of the last of the "we don't like Redbook" era DAC's.  Since then most good DACs have demonstrated such an improvement with Redbook that you almost don't care about high resolution music anymore.  Of course some will always say you must listen to hi rez, but to my mind these legends were due to the older DACs just not doing as well.

David I read where dac 8 was resolving with wider soundstage than many others. My Yggy is very good but might be slightly lacking in soundstage area. The rest to my ear is good. Thanks. 

31pm

@backdoor That DAC was part of the last of the "we don’t like Redbook" era DAC’s. Since then most good DACs have demonstrated such an improvement with Redbook that you almost don’t care about high resolution music anymore.

Not sure when this era of transition took place, but an interesting observation. I have had the same DAC (Yamamoto YDA-1a) since 2010 it is simply wonderful with Redbook CD playback. Paired with my Pro-Ject RS2T transport the music presentation is genuinely superb and natural.
 

So maybe some brands/manufacturers crossed the threshold to terrific Redbook 16/44 earlier than others. Nice topic. Listening to jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell as I type this. The CD is “Lotus Blossom “ and it’s beautiful and captivating. Long live Redbook CD.

Charles

@erik_squires +1

I owned that dac. It was good, not great, at its release and it was far better upsampling than redbook. If you want it to match other ARC equipment then cool. If you do get it though, the USB input is horrible. Use spdif or AES. In today’s dac world, I would take a Border Patrol at around $1,000 used and never, ever regret NOT getting the DAC 8. For a very brief while though, ARC’s Ref dac was selling for between $4-5k. Now that was a great dac if you ignored all the poorly thought out tech. It was a terrific dac with a Ref5se output stage. Feed that dac through its AES input and it was a screaming deal at its used price.

Dacs have come so far the past 5-10 years. Alot of really bright people have addressed jitter in some truly innovative ways. Its a great time to be in the hobby.