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Navigating DAC units.... Recommendations?

wadec22

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First love the site and detailed reviews! Found it last night and am extremely excited to join.

After going thru roughly 30 headphones, I came back to the Denon ah-d7200 as my end game.

Currently I use a Creative x7 with a O2 amp. The Denon headphones are extremely sensitive, so they pick up hiss very easily. The O2 does a pretty good job but I can still detect a very minute hiss on silent background. I have a used Cavalli Liquid Carbon X from Massdrop on the way since the advertised output impedance is roughly 1/4th the O2.

Now I'm evaluating my X7 as a DAC....

Do you think I'd notice a difference moving to a Topping D50 or Modi 3? They both measure so well and the Topping is on Massdrop for another 18H (although an alarming number of DOA units on Amazon and MD).

I can find measurements on the x7 but I'm not sure I'd consider the sources super reliable.

Any thoughts or feedback?

Thanks in advance!
 

andreasmaaan

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These measurements of the X7 are quite comprehensive and indicate it performs very well. The D50 measures better, but it seems very unlikely IMHO that it would offer any audible advantage.
 
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wadec22

wadec22

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These measurements of the X7 are quite comprehensive and indicate it performs very well. The D50 measures better, but it seems very unlikely IMHO that it would offer any audible advantage.

Really appreciate the response. Translating from one set of measurements to another can be overwhelming.

Based on the measurements you linked, where do you think it would fall approximately on the ranking graph on this site? Anything measured here you would consider comparable?
 

andreasmaaan

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Based on the measurements you linked, where do you think it would fall approximately on the ranking graph on this site? Anything measured here you would consider comparable?

I think @amirm would be best placed to answer this one, but going on the measurements from that Russian site (which seems very legit btw), it seems to perform a little better than the D50 in terms of nonlinear distortion, but a little worse in terms of noise and jitter (both almost certain to be inaudible IMHO).

@Thomas savage this is not what you're talking about is it? ;)
 

Thomas savage

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I think @amirm would be best placed to answer this one, but going on the measurements from that Russian site (which seems very legit btw), it seems to perform a little better than the D50 in terms of nonlinear distortion, but a little worse in terms of noise and jitter (both almost certain to be inaudible IMHO).

@Thomas savage this is not what you're talking about is it? ;)
Ha ha yea that’s likely it, not really any use here is it . In my brain we were creating a dac league table , maybe time to up my meds.
 
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