JSmith
Master Contributor
costs US $14,000
... for that sort of money one would expect a 100% SOTA DAC and surely a more luxurious look.
Here is under the hood;
JSmith
costs US $14,000
It gives you full spectrum to 22 Khz and less ultrasonic noise.What effect does reconstruction filter have? I mean is it audibly noticeable?
Well a good transparent AQ cable just shoved all these imperfectionsused my Audioquest cable
A switcher PSU. The purists' heads will explode.
... for that sort of money one would expect a 100% SOTA DAC and surely a more luxurious look.
Here is under the hood;
View attachment 220047
JSmith
Amir’s reasoning in the past is the Piggy Bank is for products that say they do things they don’t. Or serve zero purpose or make things worse by using them. In this case the product mostly does some of what they say it does. Might be a poor performer but it is a functional DAC and such. @amirm will correct me if I have this wrong.I have no idea how to rate this because the piggy bank panther is missing. Objectively it's in the top quartile. Also Objectively it is ridiculously overpriced and not competitive with the rest of the occupants of the top quartile. So I think that makes it a piggy bank panther in my pantheon...
What I found interesting is this is a pulse array DAC, which is supposedly meant to assist with noise floor modulation... yet Amir measures a modulating noise floor. Further from what I recall reading this is a single ended design (like all Chord DAC's I believe) and the XLR is there for convenience only via an inverting opamp, so this is why Amir is measuring slightly better performance via RCA.A switcher PSU. The purists' heads will explode.