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How Can Two DACs Sound Different?


Jim Naseum

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Every product begins as a set of engineering design goals and a budget.

 

The Engineers get to work and the trade offs begin.

 

An inexpensive product can crush far more expensive products with a clever design.

 

DAC tech and the wrap around tech is well understood at this point and the off shelf chip sets are all pretty good.

 

I purchased a Sony DVD player last year to use the basement with various amps and was surprised how good it sounds.

 

I think there are a lot of good DACs at all price points and above $500 you get into rapidly diminishing marginal returns. aka it's difficult to explain the added cost or quantify the "better performance"

 

CDs have low noise and are not as dynamic as vinyl, DTS Master Audio seems to be the best of both worlds.

 

A lot of the problem with CDs is psycho-acoustics and loudness wars, vinyl doesn't allow for loudness wars unless you want one song per side and even then it probably wouldn't work.

 

It's the mastering that ruins so many CDs that otherwise would sound perfectly good.

 

My two cents...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

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Sent from my $5000 DAC...        

 

B6klon-filtered.jpg

Gen V.  the seven- family:

Big 7 DSD DAC,

Lite 7 DSD DAC

Golden Gate Premium DSD DAC

What is standard:

USB input, DSD engine 64x and 128x. Rca S/PDIF input, Jupiter  premium capacitors. 2a3, 300B, 45, 6A3, 245, 345 and 101D triode compatibility with a selector switch. It comes with 101D tubes as standard.

Lite 7 has no chokes. Big 7 has two standard chokes. GG has 2 premium chokes

Lite 7 has AM Jupiter caps, Big 7 has Copper/Wax jupiter caps. GG has Jupiter Copper Wax plus Siver Duelund bypass.

Lite 7 and Big 7 have 64x and 128x DSD engines. GG has 256x DSD engine

Lite 7 and Big 7 have 101D Psvane tubes. GG has 101D Western Electric Replica or 45 EML MESH triodes.

Each DAC can have one more digital input of choice.

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There is not 1 shootout posted anywhere that any other DAC bested the Totaldac

Schu, Write on up please  :D

 

Honestly I would love to hear one I am sure they are great But I have to remember IGNORANCE IS BLISS, Then I wont go around wanting the thing

 

The DAC does alot do you think I could put wheels on it and drive it around ??  :D

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Looking at the TotalDac site, sounds very good but the prices on some of the stuff like the SSD is way out in left field.  I guess it's any easy way for them and others to separate money from an audiophile, which from too many magazine articles, think that for the average person, a 10k set of speakers is relatively inexpensive.

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Oh its a big difference with my setup     " not sure they would sound any different than say any pc"   I use (2) Paul Hynes SR5 Linear PSU units one power the dedicated NAS other the Router  , my NAS plugs into the Router and then out of the Router to a Total Dac D1 Server  which then feeds into my D1 Dual totaldac  AES/EBU Cable .  The sound is better than a PC , its all about a clean signal normal power supply create allot of noise along with a hard drive with a platter 

Edited by A1UC
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