[pearsall001]

Ah!! the audio bug might be biting again. My present 2 channel system consists of: A Conrad Johnson PV14L tube preamp, Van Alstine OmegaStar440EX amp, Consonance CD120 upsampling CD player, & AAD 2001 monitors. Now don't get me wrong, I really do like the way my system sounds, but it's just been buging me about this DAC issue. Do you think a DAC would benefit me & in what way? What are your experiences? What DAC's have you used & how did they perform? My budget is maxed out at $1800. Hopefully your info will allow me to make an educated decision.

[nathanm]

You must resist the urge to buy a new DAC!  Swat the upgrade bug!  Swat it dead!   Look at it this way: you already have a DAC in your CD player and a dang nice one at that.  And you said yourself you like the way your system sounds.  So stop for now!  Everything's in place already, you've succeeded!    A new DAC will cost you a lot of money and most likely sound just about the same as without it.  I've tried external DACs myself and althugh they did nothing whatsoever to hurt the existing sound, I couldn't possibly justify their cost.  I bought both a Benchark DAC1, an Ack! DAC and probably the most extreme DAC money can buy the ART DAC with Tube-O-Lator treatment. (it's the nectar of the Gods you see...) Way cool cases, very well made, I'm sure they are technically excellent, but I couldn't hear the money. 

Everyone else will likely tell you about this or that DAC and how great it is, but trust me you don't need one.  Hell, you've even got the acoustic treatment going for ya.  Maybe get some more of those?  Adding absorption is the only change I've ever made that I was not unhappy or indifferent about, it was always an improvement. Source equipment has historically been a big *meh*.

Holy smokes man, are these the speakers you've got?

Upgrade schmupgrade, you're already livin' the sweet life! Kick back and enjoy!

[pearsall001]

nathanm,

Thanks for the many words of wisdom. I pretty much think the same way but feedback from others will help me with my final decision. And yes they are my AAD 2001 monitors. Absolutely breathtaking in their performance. There won't be any new speakers for a long, long, long time. They are just that good!!!!

Cheers,
Phil

[Scott F.]

While in general terms I agree with Nathan, you may want to consider a non-oversampling DAC. This will allow you a chance to hear your CD's in a different light (so to speak). I've found that some CD's sound better upsampled and some don't. You don't have to spend anywhere near your budget to get a great sounding NOS DAC.

[TheChairGuy]

pearsall001,

I don't see any analog/vinyl among your list of equipment - blasphemy 

If I had to do it all over again...I'd have spent a lot less ($4500.00) on my digital, CD-based front end...and far more on analog.  You can spend lots on a CD-led front end, and you will often get greater pleasure in doing so...but you'll never get great or soulful music from it; merely different levels of adequate. 

Vinyl starts out pretty musical for relative audiophile chump change...and just keeps improving thru a higher degree of mechanical isolation, or higher fidelity cartridges, higher grade tonearm rigidity and bearing quality, synchronized AC motor or DC standalone motors and heavier platters for more inertia.  There is debate as to where the point where analog/vinyl is wholly superior at every level to CD (except, but notably, convenience)....personally, I feel it's somewhere around $3000.00 new.  That is, at $3000.00 (with reasonable priced cartridge included at that price), there ain't a friggin' CD or transport/DAC in the world that can touch it for overall musical pleasure.

If vinyl is just too much of a pain (no question - it is a PIA)...I'd try a good DVD/DVD-A player and invest in lots of DVD-Audio discs.  It is a far better format than CD to begin with and you don't need near the investment in front end to hear it...as it is better to begin with.  Alas, the two notable drawbacks to it vs. CD is that there are no car players for it and it seems doomed shortly.  But, there is lots of great music out there on it now. You don't need 5 channel to hear it's superiority either...it may be better still if you do have 5-6 high quality channels to listen to it on     

[Scott F.]

Alas, the two notable drawbacks to it vs. CD is that ther eare no car players for it and it seems doomed shortly.

Oh but wait! There IS a player for your car. 



Now if I could just find one that does 12" disc's.

[lonewolfny42]

Scott....you wanna play lp's in the car....who would do that ?

Hmmmm....looks like Lawrence Welk........

[Frihed91]

Consonance sells a CDP that is non-oversampling.  It sounds retty good, but so does the one you have.  No DAC.  Fucking pain in the ass to get a sympatico transport for less than $2K.  I mean it!

[JLM]

For $300 you could get a Squeeze Box.  My Red Wine Audio modded SB3 out of the box outperformed a Sony 7700 with Ack dAck! v.2.  And it also provides internet streaming for background listening.  After you've ripped your collection, convenience is extreme.  With it's digital domain volume control I don't need a pre-amp either.  For a couple of more coins you could use an Olive player that sounds even better and has it's own CDP and hard drive.  So for $1300 you'd be off the grid and living large.

[woodsyi]

I know this argument has been made before and some will say you can wait ad infinitum because technology will contiue to improve.  But I, personally, would not invest in any digital front end until at least next year to see what comes out later at RMAF and CES.  I just feel that we are on the verge of some remarkable breakthough in digital playback.  If nothing eles, I would want to get some feedbacks on the Transporter, all the Olive products as well as EA's I2S Light DAC along with other traditional gears.  You wouldn't have bought that Nakamichi Dragon tape deck if you knew CD was going to take over.  Would you?     On the other hand, as TCG mentioned, you can forget D and just stay A with vinyl -- no need to convert and it still sings pure.

[nathanm]

Well geez, I would definitely get that swell in-car record player instead of a DAC!    Wow, how the heck did they get that to work I wonder?  Is there like 2lbs. of tracking force?  Can you only drive 5mph in a level, smooth parking lot?

[PhilNYC]

You can spend lots on a CD-led front end, and you will often get greater pleaure in doing so...but you'll never get music from it. 

C'mon...that's a big of an overstatement, isn't it?  I get music from an AM radio if it's got Robert Johnson playing the blues on it.

[Bob Reynolds]

My take on it is that unless the analog section of your current player is poor (and who knows?) there is no reason to consider an external DAC or another player.

[Zheeeem]

For the past 10 years I've had an outboard DAC.  This made sense to me at the time, since I was having considerable difficulty finding a CDP with an onboard DAC that was any good for a reasonable price.  Also, I've always viewed the transport as the weakest link, reliability-wise, so I wanted to keep the two separate.  My tendancy has been to buy a good DAC and a cheap transport.

Currently I have an AVA Ultra DAC, and love it.  It is in your price range.  Dunno if you would actually prefer it to what you now have. 

You might consider contacting the company whose product you are considering and seeing if you can try it out in home.

Just out of curiousity, why are you considering a new DAC?

[pearsall001]

Zheeeem,

It's pretty much out of curiousity. As you can see in my signature I already have Franks OmegaStar 440EX amp & simply love it. I've also talked to Frank about his DAC & he suggested his 30 day home trial. I just might take him up on it. I was really only looking for feedback & guys opinions if an outboard DAC worked for them, which ones did they like etc. At present I am happy with my sound but am always looking to push the envelope so to speak.

[Zheeeem]

I saw your AVA amp, so I figured that you were thinking AVA DAC.  But not knowing anything about your current DAC I was a bit reluctant to say an Ultra would be better.  I ran AVA solid state stuff for almost 30 years, and finally a couple years ago started buying Frank's hybrid stuff.  It has a very similar sonic signature as the Omega stuff (I had an omega amp, preamp and DAC for a long time).  It is also equally rugged and hefty in the bass.  The mids and highs are smoother and more detailed.

Anyhow, a 30 day satisfaction guarantee is a pretty good deal.  At most you're only out of pocket about $30 for shipping if you don't like it.

[TheChairGuy]

You can spend lots on a CD-led front end, and you will often get greater pleaure in doing so...but you'll never get music from it. 

C'mon...that's a big of an overstatement, isn't it?  I get music from an AM radio if it's got Robert Johnson playing the blues on it.

Allright Phil, point well taken, I modified my comments to reflect more sensitivity towards yee old Compact Disc...please see my above post on page 1. 

[GHM]

pearsall001,
I encourage you the experiment. There's so much out there. It is unrealistic to think that you can't improve the sound of a $1200 retail CDP. When infact with the right DAC you can and the difference won't be subtle either. I agree with the comments of 30 day trials. You never know what you may like unless you try. The DAC may not cost any where near $1800 and give you more pleasure.

I was once stuck on CDPs..thinking well because it has a DAC inside. What could I be missing? Now there's no way I would go with a one box player. You can always use the Dac of your choice with other equipment. You can't say the same for the one box player. Just something else to think about.

IME using separates has benefits. You get separate power supplies, better isolation between components designed to perform different task in the digital to analog process. Simpler isn't always better in sound quality. It just depends on what you're using in the setup and what you want to achieve.

Good luck

[avahifi]

To repeat what I have said before about this subject, and no, we do not build outboard DACs just to make a few extra bucks.

>>Essentially, in a one piece CD/DVD player, the tray takes up some of the room, a couple of solid state circuit boards a little bit more, and the insides are mostly air.  The D to A conversion, digital filters, analog filters, and analog output stage are normally done with a couple of large scale ICs the size of your fingernail and a few surface mount passive parts.  Cost, maybe a dollar or so. Maybe a couple of transistors thrown in.

This would be just fine if this kind of engineering worked well musically.  It doesn't.  To preserve the music, we must translate all of the digital data stream from the disk to music faithfully.  We must also filter out all of the switching frequencies and their harmonics, we must drive loads downstream.  The typical IC solution for this has neither the bandwidth or current drive capability to do the tasks required.  The residual digital switching noise is going to be at 44KHz (or 176KHz with 4 x oversampling) and its upper harmonics.  An audio stage that barely works to 20KHz does not cut it.  The typical linear IC barely has 10 mA of current drive and that is not adequate to drive the analog filters at the frequencies involved, let alone a downstream load (cables, switching networks, etc.).  The typical "one bit" D to A converter can only operate at the internal clock speed, maybe 10 meg or thereabouts, and thus can only retreive about 1 percent of the digital data on a "one pass" basis at high frequencies.  A pure 16 bit parallel processor is needed to retrieve all of the data at all frequencies.  Nobody does that any more (except us).  Why not? Because 1-bit processors measure better on steady state test signals.  Of course they only provide 8-track cassette resolution at high frequency on music. Oh well.

The Ultra DAC requires a fairly complex multi-stage regulated power supply, a hefty transformer to support the tubes and the digital stuff too, a complex logic board doing things our way with many carefully selected discrete parts and circuits rather than dinky little surface mount stuff to make it tiny and cheep (and sound like "who cares").  The Ultra DAC also requires a hybrid tube analog filter and audio output board to make sure the music can actually get to the rest of your system undisturbed.  Although we were able to squeeze it all into the previous 12" wide chassis, it was really nice to have more real estate in the new 17" wide chassis to provide more distance to the power transformer and make a few other useful enhancements.

Of course we will plead "guilty" as to having lots of air in the box when the new chassis is used for the OmegaStar DAC, where the analog filters and audio output stage are done with very high speed linear ICs and current amplifiers (a great way to maintain the necessary bandwidth and current drive without the significant expense of the hybrid tube section).  The OmegaStar does not have either the price or the absolute "air" of the Ultra DAC, but it does have the approval of The Absolute Sound (a Golden Ear award there a couple of years ago).  They liked the Ultra DAC too in a recent report.

I guess the real reason for a high quality external DAC is that those of us who build them want a lot better music than what the mass market designers can give them.  They can get the digital data stream perfect, easy to do that with the proper error code execution, and turn out perfectly working transports like popcorn for under $100, but when it comes to analog music, well, I believe the designers really don't care. As long as they can sell jillions of I-Pods and compressed downloads, they are happy.  I want more than that, that's why we do it.  <<<

Frank Van Alstine