Dacs. What a waste of money!!!!

[Rick1979]

Bought an v Dac ii about 4 months back and sold within a week. This week I foolishly bought an rdac and yes it's better than the Dac in my 6 year Samsung LCD , just. Me and my mate had compared the rdac in my system and his and come to the conclusion it's barely if any better than his arcam cd62. It just beats my Xbox 360, sky box. And sony 480 blu ray. I'd say 10% gain in sound quality is a bit rough for £300. Now selling the damn thing and buying a cd player like I should done in the first place.

I feel so stupid for getting into this rubbish, throwing my money away!

 

[Anonymous]

A cd player with a dac in it or a dual dac in it ?.you need to let dac,s burn in over time .

 

[Frank Harvey]

Me and my mate had compared the rdac in my system and his and come to the conclusion it's barely if any better than his arcam cd62. It just beats my Xbox 360, sky box. And sony 480 blu ray. I'd say 10% gain in sound quality is a bit rough for £300.

What's the rest of the system?

 

[ID.]

Sounds like much of the HiFi hobby. You get a lot for decent budget kit, and then the law of diminishing returns can realy kick in. That said, the improvement can't really be quantified, so what you felt was just 10%, but seem to another person to be night and day, like a blanket had been lifted off the speakers.

When I switched my B&W 685 speakers back in before selling them, I thought, wellm they weren't really that far of my DB1i, but those subtle differences, that extra level of sophistication, brings me so much more pleasure.

A bit better than the CD62? Sounds about right for a DAC at that price.

BTW, you don't say what your system is. Maybe it doesn't batch well with the components, or maybe the other components aren't good enough to let it shine.

 

[jonomd]

From my own experience the value of the DAC depends on the system. I tried one on my original system Marantz CD48, Yamaha HD1500, rotel 931 and tannoy M1. Pretty modest components and Dac (firestone spitfire) made a fairly significant difference. Soon as I upgraded the speaker to Dali Lektor 2 found the Dac ( firestone spitfire and beresford caiman) to be of very limited effect. I am aware these are budget dacs. It may have been that the speaker and the Dacs were not best of matches.

Where the DAC made a big difference is with my ancient laptop and the WDtv live box.

With the price of cd players especially second hand i think they win very easilly for value for money as long as you play cds.

I got rid of the dacs and just use the yamahas on board dac. They offered a slight improvement but to me not really worth the outlay.

Course that could all change if I move up a level to more expensive dacs.

 

[Overdose]

I'm sure that there was probably advice at the time to suggest what you have now found out. It's simply a matter of whos advice you have chosen to take. DACs do have their place, but only (IMO) for purely digital sources. Buying a DAC for a CD/DVD player in the hope of large gains will not always end with better results.

Don't feel stupid, just chalk it up to experience and next time, do a bit of research and use some common sense.

 

[Rick1979]

Hi,

Just to add my system is alpha 10 amp, ma rs6 but no cdp at the moment, hence the Dac which I intended to use with the Sony 480 blu ray as a cdp. Seriously though I've read that a cheap bdp and rdac will beat any cdp under £500 which I now know is bull. Truth is the Sony on its own sounds nearly as good as the rdac. Also, the rdac isn't brand new PHEW!! So it should be run in.

Again, £300 to just beat the tv, xbox and my bdp is a pretty bad return and when you add to it I've still got no dedicated cdp. The Sony is very clunky as cdp. I had a Cambridge audio 650bd which was a massive sonic upgrade on the Sony but regrettably sold it, I now plan to get a good blu ray along the likes of an older pioneer and a dedicated cdp.

Thanks for the replys guys.

 

[pauln]

Earlier this year I bought an Audio Gd NFB-12 DAC/headphone amp for £189 to use with my computer in my "home office"; it's hooked up to an Acoustic Energy Aego 2.1 speaker system. I was expecting there to be a big improvement in SQ but to be honest, I struggle to hear much of an improvement through the speakers over what they were like when connected to the analogue out of the motherboard's integrated sound card. It does slightly improve the sound with headphones (AKG Studio 240), but that's probably not down to the DAC. It is very handy to have both phones and speakers permanently plugged in and to have the facility to easily switch between the two. I'm glad I didn't spend more than I did really. Maybe with £1000 speakers/headphones I would hear more of an improvement but I'm not about to put it to the test!

 

[simon3102000]

Dacs are great if you go into the streaming game like most, but if i was still into playing cd i would deffo get a dedicated cd player.