How much do I really need to spend on a dac to hear a proper upgrade?

[shafesk]

Dear forumers,

I want to know users who have upgraded their dacs with success, at the moment I've got two dacs, the hrt music streamer 2+ and the dac magic. The hrt while more expensive doesn't sound better, it just sounds different. I want to allocate my next big expenditure on the dac, so I want to know what dac I can buy to go like "WOW" this is something else. The current system is dynaudio excite 12s, iconaudio la4mk3, a custom made power amp (which is far superior to my audiolab 8000s) and the Denon music streamer.

Cheers,

Shafin

 

[Ben123]

my £200 beresford dac is many many many times better than my £25 CYP dac.

From £200 and up things can get a bit dicey. Practically everyone on the forums who has upgraded from a beresford dac (and other dacs ~£200 mark) have said the Rega dac is a worthy increase in performance. The rega will be my next dac demo.

£500 and up improvements become a bit subjective/can of worms/arguments.

All the best

 

[shafesk]

Ahh the Rega Dac, I've been after it too but haven't had a chance to hear it...please let me know when you get a chance to hear it in your own system.

 

[Craig M.]

so I want to know what dac I can buy to go like "WOW" this is something else

I'm absolutely certain you don't want to hear this, but you can't. I say this as someone who has spent over £5000 on dacs. That's right, £5000. Feel free to point and laugh.

 

[BenLaw]

oke: :rofl:

 

[Craig M.]

Hmmm, maybe not laugh quite that much! :help:

 

[CnoEvil]

I suggest you try a Linn Sneaky DS.

 

[altruistic.lemon]

Despite it being forbidden by some here, I've heard differences between DACs. It does depend on the caliber of your other equipment, though.

Try thr Rega DAC, the MyDac and one of the Naim DACs. That should give you a fair spread and you should be able to hear differences.

 

[Zax89swe]

I dont belive it, did not hear any diffrence what so ever between a 300euro dac and a 30euro computer soundcard. Sound is much things but nothing was improved.

 

[BenLaw]

Hmmm, maybe not laugh quite that much! :help:

If there was an intermediate laughing emoticon I'd probably have gone for that.

 

[pauln]

Some DACs are deliberately "voiced" to sound different - otherwise they would all sound very similar if competently designed. Depends if you want truth or colouration really.

Nice little article about the Benchmark DAC1 and some others here: http://nwavguy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/benchmark-dac1-pre.html

 

[Craig M.]

I've heard differences between DACs.

I've heard massive differences between DACs. I think the amp contributes as much, if not more, to the differences though. 2 DACs that sounded very, very different through one amp sounded almost the same through another - both £2k+ amps. The op doesn't seem to be after a difference though, he wants a WOW improvement, which I don't think exists - just some might suit your system better than another. And it has zilch to do with price.

 

[steve_1979]

If you want a WOW improvement forget about spending loads on a DAC.

The real WOW improvements come from improving your amplifer/speaker combination and room acoustics/speaker positioning.

 

[altruistic.lemon]

I suspect you're right there, Craig M. Used to think amps were pretty much the same, but am beginning to think the better the amp, the more you get out of the source, plus obviously benefits at the speaker end. That's what CNO contends, I know, albeit to a greater extent.

 

[davedotco]

I suspect you're right there, Craig M. Used to think amps were pretty much the same, but am beginning to think the better the amp, the more you get out of the source, plus obviously benefits at the speaker end. That's what CNO contends, I know, albeit to a greater extent.

Other things come into play too, the ability to handle spurious out of band noise for example. Some years ago I found myself hearing a well known, highly regarded, budget dac rather a lot, one that we did not sell. I found it being used by some of my customers and I found it's quality to be extremely variable, sounding brash and grainy much of the time but quite decent on other occasions.

It took me a while to work out what was going on but I am fairly convinced that the dac reacted very poorly (or vice versa) to some amplifiers and that this accounts for some of the differences heard between dacs

Edit to make sense.

 

[CnoEvil]

That's what CNO contends, I know, albeit to a greater extent.

I'm off to crack open the Champagne! :bounce:

:cheers:

 

[Craig M.]

I suspect you're right there, Craig M. Used to think amps were pretty much the same, but am beginning to think the better the amp, the more you get out of the source, plus obviously benefits at the speaker end. That's what CNO contends, I know, albeit to a greater extent.

Other things come into play too, the ability to handle spurious out of band noise for example. Some years ago I found myself hearing a well known, highly regarded, budget dac rather a lot, one that we did not sell. I found it being used by some of my customers and I found it's quality to be extremely variable, sounding brash and grainy much of the time but quite decent on other occasions.

It took me a while to work out what was going on but I am fairly convinced that the dac reacted very poorly (or vice versa) to some amplifiers and that this accounts for some of the differences heard between dacs

Edit to make sense.

That's what I was getting at earlier.

 

[davedotco]

I suspect you're right there, Craig M. Used to think amps were pretty much the same, but am beginning to think the better the amp, the more you get out of the source, plus obviously benefits at the speaker end. That's what CNO contends, I know, albeit to a greater extent.

Other things come into play too, the ability to handle spurious out of band noise for example. Some years ago I found myself hearing a well known, highly regarded, budget dac rather a lot, one that we did not sell. I found it being used by some of my customers and I found it's quality to be extremely variable, sounding brash and grainy much of the time but quite decent on other occasions.

It took me a while to work out what was going on but I am fairly convinced that the dac reacted very poorly (or vice versa) to some amplifiers and that this accounts for some of the differences heard between dacs

Edit to make sense.

That's what I was getting at earlier.

Apologies, I thought you were simply making the point that a better amplifier shows up differences because it is more transparent.

There is more going on than that.

 

[Craig M.]

No worries. I mustn't have worded it very well because AL thought the same thing.

 

[Ben123]

. I found it being used by some of my customers and I found it's quality to be extremely variable, sounding brash and grainy much of the time but quite decent on other occasions.

It took me a while to work out what was going on but I am fairly convinced that the dac reacted very poorly (or vice versa) to some amplifiers and that this accounts for some of the differences heard between dacs

could be going off on a tangent here but...

what youve described sounds a lot like the gain being too high on the dac. I thought all gain on dacs were supposed to adhere to some standard....but they dont. I had to send a beresford dac back becuase it sounded awful with my amp. The manufacturer said the gain was too high for my amp.

I have had experience of this in car audio too. Head unit pre out gain being too high for my factory fit in car amplifier. It worked but just sounded bad. Fitted an adjustable gain unit and all was restored

 

[MajorFubar]

There are differences, but as I've proved to myself, the laws of diminishing-returns set-in quicker with outboard DACs than any other piece of HiFi. Either that or I'm deaf.

As an example, my highly-rated HRT II+ is definitely better than the standard DAC in my Mac Mini, but not earth-statteringly so. I *think* I could pick it out consistently in an ABX test with the same piece of music through both DACs. However if you then played a different piece of music that I was familiar with through just one of them and asked me to say which it is, I'm not sure I could be certain.

 

[Rethep]

There are differences, but as I've proved to myself, the laws of diminishing-returns set-in quicker with outboard DACs than any other piece of HiFi. Either that or I'm deaf.

As an example, my highly-rated HRT II+ is definitely better than the standard DAC in my Mac Mini, but not earth-statteringly so. I *think* I could pick it out consistently in an ABX test with the same piece of music through both DACs. However if you then played a different piece of music that I was familiar with through just one of them and asked me to say which it is, I'm not sure I could be certain.

How would you say "sounds better" ? To me it seams that it sounds better in your setup, but might sound differently in another one.

I have compared DacMagic to Airport Express, and i could not hear one of them being better than the other.

If i would hear another (more expensive) Dac, sound better than my AE, what would that mean ? More depth, More fluintly, more dynamic, softer etc. etc. ? Or would it just sound different, but not especially better ? With "digital sounding" (cheaper) DAC's , they say that there exists "digital soundstagedepth". But, hey, i like soundstagedepth! Should an expensive DAC that sounds softer, but has less soundstagedepth, sound better than ?

For the moment i go with the opinion that DAC's sound different in a way, but only slightly so, and not especially better.

 

[MajorFubar]

Well I'm rubbish at putting this sort of thing into words, but when I've directly compared the two (not blindly, it has to be said) the HRT just seems to sound bigger, everything spaced-out better, instruments more separated, deeper soundstage, crisper transients. The usual stuff. But not by IMO a £300 margin. As I said, if you pulled a load of albums from my collection and played them through either the Mac's DAC or the HRT and I had to guess which it was without comparison to the other, I probably wouldn't guess right with statistical significance. There's no 'night and day' differences between them IMO, it's the kind of stuff you need to really listen for.

But...the HRT absolutely wastes the DAC in my Toshiba P350 laptop. Can tell the two apart from a mile away with earmuffs on. So not all DACs are similar.