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DANGERDAN

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My Stereophile December 2012 issue just arrived, "the 60 Greatest Products of 2012," in which the Dragonfly is named as BOTH the "Computer Audio Component of the Year: and the "Budget Component of the Year." A Stereophile editorial assistant said "It's making a huge improvement in these things," pointing to his little white Klipsches. He also uses Klipsch S4 in-ear phones.

I don't doubt that Dan's tube DAC has more 3-D space around the music, but, boy, the Dragonfly is SO compact and neat.

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My Stereophile December 2012 issue just arrived, "the 60 Greatest Products of 2012," in which the Dragonfly is named as BOTH the "Computer Audio Component of the Year: and the "Budget Component of the Year." A Stereophile editorial assistant said "It's making a huge improvement in these things," pointing to his little white Klipsches. He also uses Klipsch S4 in-ear phones.

I don't doubt that Dan's tube DAC has more 3-D space around the music, but, boy, the Dragonfly is SO compact and neat.

Thats good to hear Larry, i actually recommended the dragon fly to a mate for his lappy due to there being a lot of noise and he wasn't prepared to spend a lot of money into a dac especially when his system couldn't fully benefit from it.

I actually spent the whole week or two auditioning thousands of dollars worth of equipment and i must say i am very tired, i got to try speakers such as paradigm, dynaudio, usher, B&W, Kef, PSB, Proac, JBL, Polk, Jamo, Wharfedale. And thats just the speakers, i have managed to get my hands on a few nice and very expensive dacs but the most important ones are the CP-800 from clasee and the rotel rdd-06 which i wanted to try in comparison to my dac. I also auditioned heaps of tubes and plenty of nice transistor amps, including some again from classe.

My As far as Dac comparison i have to say the M-dac surprised me very well, it was probably 90 percent in comparison to the CP-800 from classe which retails for probably 5-10x more so i was definitely most happy with that. For the Rotel rdd-06 it was somewhat better than anything in its pricerange including the dacmagic +, it was much more than i expected in its price range and even outdone more of the expensive dacs i tried over the weeks as well.

I wont go into speaker comparison as it could get taken the wrong way but as far as the amps go all i will say is that more money is not entirely needed to get high quality sound, i A/Bed all the amps i tried against my beloved Rotel 1582 and nothing i found surpassed it for me to go "OH wow thats much nicer". The only thing that did really nicely was the classe again and it wasn't a major improvement but definitely something for someone to spend to perfect their audio chain for good.

So yea Rotel sure have something special on their hands when it comes to well balanced amplification as i was expecting to be outdone by a lot of the equipment i had auditioned.

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Wow, that's a lot of work! How many different stores did you have to visit? Did you travel around the country very much or is audio concentrated in one area? It sounds like NZ has an exceptional variety of audio equipment -- I'm not sure I could track down all those brands in the DC area. Isn't some brand, Perreaux, made there?

Did you get to try a Dragonfly yourself? Any Klipsch in those parts? Do people go to Australia to shop for hi-fi?

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I had to just go up to our main city for the north island (1 hour away) and also quite amazingly there was one part where i live where they had a mansion filled with heaps of equipment. It could be because of how small a country we are.

Overall i did have to go to about 5 stores but as far as i know Australia don't have that great of a audio enthusiasm but thats only a assumption i made from online searching, couldn't find much. Perreaux is a nz brand which i believe started really badly in its early days (founded in napier as far as i know) but i did have a audition with it last week at harvey norman which are their main retailers for them and i do think they are some very nice equipment and it could be comparable to either rotel or classe but i couldn't say for sure as i didn't have much a toy with them. They have a strong following however.

Didn't get to try the dragonfly myself as i don't think they are available in my country, but not only that the places i visited are probably too scared to stock something not so.. well expensive hahaha. Didn't find anyone following klipsch at any stores.

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The Absolute Sound December 2012 issue contains a whole section of reviews on USB DACs. There may be a different community of USB DACs in the US vs. the UK -- TAS's includes Micromega at $399, and a set of reviews of 4 others ranging in price from $699 to $3,600, among which I didn't recognize any names from Dan's group.

Only Robert Harley's Micromega article mentioned, and made comparisons with, the Dragonfly. He said the Micromega is smoother and more dimensional, and more refined and resolved, while the D/F has a little tighter bass and is more incisive rhythmically.

The other 4 were reviewed one-by-one, with no comparisons made between them or with any other DAC -- only the usual artful descriptions that let you read whatever you want into each product.

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