Decent DAC for £150 max?

[FiftyTifty]

Maybe I'm being dumb but I'm still not understanding? Outside of perhaps sinad the reviews are not given scores and the highest sinad measured is 123? If it is this you are referring to I can assure you it's not a big difference.

No worries. I'm just saying that the SU-1 is coming out as the king of bang for buck by far (at least, without balanced).

C-100 is a star performer... it *SHOULD* be identical to the well reviewed SU-1 but with a few additional niceties.

If you cant live with the few minor operational issues it has like no vol. knob, not great BT then its a no brainer.


edit. I thought you had a yamaha receiever

for the above actives since it has XLR the M300se is the obvious choice... now its $120 usd but really i wouldnt spend less given you are using your dac to cover up operational issues with actives

i certainly would not use a plain fixed output dac if it were me... BUT some people can manage that

Yeah I'm coming round to the balanced thing. I don't have a receiver, but a pair of Yamaha speakers.

SMSL C100 for £79.20 (using voucher), with next day delivery:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BNFZ75LJ/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_1?smid=A2XL2OZZCZEZ5B&psc=1

Not bad at all. Hmm....

With the price of balanced dacs, I'm wondering. What if I bought two SMSL SU-1's , set the first for my Yamaha speakers & the second for my Edirols, and changed their volume nobs to get equal volume?

Basically faking balanced by cheaping out and getting a seperate DAC for each pair of speakers. Or is that just nonsense because balanced DAC is something different and better?

 

[TK750]

No worries. I'm just saying that the SU-1 is coming out as the king of bang for buck by far (at least, without balanced).


Yeah I'm coming round to the balanced thing. I don't have a receiver, but a pair of Yamaha speakers.


Not bad at all. Hmm....

With the price of balanced dacs, I'm wondering. What if I bought two SMSL SU-1's , set the first for my Yamaha speakers & the second for my Edirols, and changed their volume nobs to get equal volume?

Basically faking balanced by cheaping out and getting a seperate DAC for each pair of speakers. Or is that just nonsense because balanced DAC is something different and better?

No probs, yeh looks like a good choice to me. Unless you have problems with ground loop noise balanced isn't going to make any difference. It's one of those things that's nice to have but by no means necessary. Not sure what you're on about with the two dacs but sounds completely pointless to me. Hope you find something that suits anyway!

 

[Leejb1970]

Topping D10 balanced. Look at the review index. Simply the best under your budget point. I still use mine as a digital bridge.

 

[FiftyTifty]

No probs, yeh looks like a good choice to me. Unless you have problems with ground loop noise balanced isn't going to make any difference. It's one of those things that's nice to have but by no means necessary. Not sure what you're on about with the two dacs but sounds completely pointless to me. Hope you find something that suits anyway!

Someone said witht wo pairs of different speakers to get a DAC with 2x balanced stereo outputs. I was thinking that if it's to do with the DAC output, get one DAC per pair?

Topping D10 balanced. Look at the review index. Simply the best under your budget point. I still use mine as a digital bridge.

It relies on USB input, which is ehhhh. And I also have no spare USB ports except through this splitter I have but it's having to compete with all the other connected devices.

 

[FiftyTifty]

Can you order from France, perhaps?

SMSL SU-1 DAC AK4493S XMOS XU316 32bit 768kHz DSD512 MQA MQA-CD - Audiophonics

Compact and powerful, the SMSL SU-1 DAC represents an affordable and efficient digital to analog conversion solution. Taking advantage of a careful design, it offers a great versatility while allowing a sound restitution of great quality.

www.audiophonics.fr

Amazon also has a used unit for 72GBP https://www.amazon.co.uk/S-M-S-L-MQA-CD-Decoder-AK4493S-768kHz/dp/B0C1Y7C9HH/

Ah hell. Went to checkout, and it's only after calculating shipping and trying to purchase they hit me with:

A minimum purchase total of 160,00 € (tax excl.) is required to validate your order, current purchase total is 74,17 € (tax excl.).

So I have to spend 180 quid total to actually get it. Which is over my budget.

Do I really have to buy from AliExpress? That 15 day shipping is eugh.

 

[Veri]

Ah hell. Went to checkout, and it's only after calculating shipping and trying to purchase they hit me with:

A minimum purchase total of 160,00 € (tax excl.) is required to validate your order, current purchase total is 74,17 € (tax excl.).

Ohhh that is pretty unfortunate. Didn't know that.

 

[FiftyTifty]

Yeah it's a bummer. I decided to go for the SMSL C100 recommended by @fuzzy_logic, since I can at least get in the UK and is pretty decent for the price.

 

[Joe Smith]

Topping D10 balanced. Look at the review index. Simply the best under your budget point. I still use mine as a digital bridge.

But D10 only has USB input, right?

 

[Berwhale]

I can't remember what the exact calculated number is off the top of my head (think it was somewhere between 90-100), but I'd suggest using a benchmark of anything 100+ is grand.

See this thread for reference to measurements and audibility thresholds... https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/