This is what I was afraid of -- that I'd pass on subtle differences and conclusions that took me several days of careful comparison to reach, and people would see the review as negative.Thanks for the review.
To me that seems pretty negative. I hate pronounced highs and glare and exhausting listening. That's why I sold my Unison Research Unico amplifier. And there were more negative things it seems. A bit sad to read this.
Please read what I said at the start: "In a nutshell, this is a wonderful DAC at an amazing price, and I'm buying one. It almost equals the best DAC I have here, an Yggdrasil, which is twice the money for a quarter the channels and is frankly a hard act to follow, beating out even a $4000 DAC I had here." If that isn't a rave, I don't know what is!
Yeah, in the end, the Yggdrasil came out on top for me, but we're talking about one of the best DAC's made, with five power supplies, high precision ladder DAC's, and a balanced Class A discrete output. The thing weighs a ton.
If I were to get a Chord Dave here, and A/B it with the Yggdrasil, I'd no doubt hear some things that the Dave does better than the Yggy. You can't get too obsessed about these differences, as easy as it is to do so.
However, yah, the glaring highs. We're the same there. For those of us who are bothered by it, ladder DAC's seem to be the way to go. I'd been struggling with this for some years, with my Exasound e28 Mk II. And then I upgraded to the Exasound e38 Mk II. This e38 is a stunning DAC, and the highs are improved from the 9018 (and I think maybe the 9028 though I've read that the only difference is higher output current), but there was still that glare.
That's when I got desperate and having read often that ladder DAC's don't suffer from "digitis" bought a Gungnir and compared them. It took me about three seconds to know that the Gumby was the way I wanted to go. Then I bought the Yggdrasil (all of these are returnable with a restocking fee) and compared it to the Gumby. They each had their virtues and honestly, if I were buying a ladder DAC out of the box, I'd go with the less expensive Gumby. But I thought the Yggy was better on massed orchestral material and the Gumby had an issue so I sent the Gumby back.
For some of us, it seems that there's no substitute for a ladder DAC (or the PS Audio or Chords' FPGA's), but I think that depends on the system, person, and musical tastes, as well as how familiar they are with live music.
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