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Which DAC would you choose?

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Blumlein 88

Blumlein 88

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Thanks for fulfilling my curiosity.

BTW does the Forte provide switchable I/O sensitivity? I used RME Multiface II in a restoration studio several years ago and that switch doesn't have any SNR penalty which means I can for example, set it to -10dBV to test a budget smartphone with some 0.5Vrms tiny output.
http://www.rme-audio.de/en/products/multiface_2.php

PS: it is an external PCIE interface

Despite being an old and discontinued product with poorer specs than the adi-2, Multiface II has much more resasonable I/O layout, and the ADI-2 "FS" discussion really made me worry about the future of this company, it looks like it is a beginning of being "evil".

It has a 10 db pad on the mic inputs. The microphone inputs have 0-75 db gain. For line you have gain range of -12 to 42 db. Both have an EIN of 128.5 db (I forget if that is dbu or dbv) which is pretty good. All this is done in analog circuitry so the noise penalty for gain is small. In the case of measuring a low output smartphone I've used the microphone input as it will handle it just fine. So I am not sure this is equivalent to changing sensitivity with no noise penalty. The noise penalty is very small and few devices will have a quieter noise floor than the ADC in the Forte.
 
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