I'm starting to look for a replacement for my existing DAC. I'm not going to say which one it is, but let's just say it's from a brand that's not a favorite with this forum. Aside from possibly audible sonic issues, the unit is having trouble with its front display blanking out, and it's never been particularly robust in terms of always responding to inputs and such. From what I can gather, technical support for it will be ending soon too, so now might be a good time to finally make a move.
With the understanding that almost anything I get based on recommendations from this group is likely to measure far better, I do have one requirement that's rather more aesthetic: It needs to live on a rack/stand with the rest of my gear and look like it's a "full size" audio device. In other words, the very small desktop/headphone DACs that have been frequently reviewed here will just look wrong in my setup. I know that's a fairly vain requirement, but there it is. A half-rack width unit would be ok, but nothing smaller than that.
I think most of the current DACs supply my other connectivity needs (SPDIF/Coax, optical, USB, AES). I have a separate standalone streaming device, and have a few older analog devices that mandate having a separate analog preamp too, so this will truly be just a DAC. If it has other functionality, fine (my current one does too); I'm not going to exclude something due to having too many features.
Budget is a secondary concern. I don't want to spend Mola Mola money of course, but it's abundantly clear that there's no need to. I'm thinking of things like the Okto Stereo (if they were taking orders), Holo May, or Matrix X-Sabre Pro. Is there any compelling reason to pick one device in this class over the others once you reach this end of the SINAD charts and general functionality? I don't see SINAD as the be-all, end-all metric, of course, but most of the devices that do well here also seem to have things like linearity and jitter and multitone down too.
Thanks for any suggestions!
With the understanding that almost anything I get based on recommendations from this group is likely to measure far better, I do have one requirement that's rather more aesthetic: It needs to live on a rack/stand with the rest of my gear and look like it's a "full size" audio device. In other words, the very small desktop/headphone DACs that have been frequently reviewed here will just look wrong in my setup. I know that's a fairly vain requirement, but there it is. A half-rack width unit would be ok, but nothing smaller than that.
I think most of the current DACs supply my other connectivity needs (SPDIF/Coax, optical, USB, AES). I have a separate standalone streaming device, and have a few older analog devices that mandate having a separate analog preamp too, so this will truly be just a DAC. If it has other functionality, fine (my current one does too); I'm not going to exclude something due to having too many features.
Budget is a secondary concern. I don't want to spend Mola Mola money of course, but it's abundantly clear that there's no need to. I'm thinking of things like the Okto Stereo (if they were taking orders), Holo May, or Matrix X-Sabre Pro. Is there any compelling reason to pick one device in this class over the others once you reach this end of the SINAD charts and general functionality? I don't see SINAD as the be-all, end-all metric, of course, but most of the devices that do well here also seem to have things like linearity and jitter and multitone down too.
Thanks for any suggestions!
