I’ve enjoyed reading this thread, even if some of it’s gone directly over my head.
What DAC would you recommend in the £200-£500 region and would it be superior to the one in my Bluesound Node2i)?
I think you need to spend more, and more to the point I think look at more interesting architectures to DAC's if you want a sound upgrade.
I got sucked in to the whole SINAD measurements game, bought the Schiit Modius because of its massively higher 'score' over the Node 2i internal DAC.
But the end result was it basically sounded the same, just ever so slightly smoother - and no way would I have passed a blind test.
IF SINAD was everything, as many like to suggest it is, then the 2i to Modius represents about as big of a delta as you will get. But in practice/listening there is nothing in it.
I have however more recently changed out the DAC to the Schiit Bifrost 2, which is their multibit architecture and uses their proprietary phase and time based filtering.
Absolutely this has made an audible improvement, I'm not going into the changes I've heard here - but suffice to say it's an upgrade and I consider it finally money well spent.
I wasn't especially expecting to hear a difference, based on my dismal results prior trying different DACs, and I'm not one to convince myself of differences - I do not hear differences between optical/coax like some apparently can for example! So I try to be as objective as possible and was fully prepared to sell it on had it not delivered (Schiit sold in the UK you can always get what you paid for it if not more given no UK stock for so long now). - However it's most definitely a keeper.
Based on my experience:
- All D/S based DACs I have tried sound as good as the same really, even when A/B comparing as said very high to very low SINAD DACs.
- Schiit's Bifrost 2 Multibit does for sure sound a step up. It's still subtle don't get me wrong, nothing like compared to swapping out speakers, but absolutely it is a worthwhile upgrade when the rest of the system warrants it.
- I believe it's down to the filtering (the Bifrost 2 is Op amp output, so it's not like it can be attributed to some super fancy output stage), and so by extrapolation I would imagine Chord, Denafrips, Holo, (anything using a more proprietary design) etc - are likely to all sound different due to their filters and implementation. D/S all tends to be the same chip/filtering, and so as long as the implementation is ok, there's little to separate their sound - certainly this is corroborated in my testing and listening of them.
As for the measurements guys who will like to trot out the usual, level matched blind test... I ran REW sweeps of the Modius vs Bifrost 2 test with the Mic in same position (to 'prove' as best I can that the levels were the same):
- As you can see, the core of the sweeps overlay perfectly so we're talking a level match that's essentially perfect, within the realms of audibility.
- The Bifrost 2 is clearly resolving more detail as can be seen in several areas, bare in mind also this is 1/6 smoothed so non smoothed I'm sure would show more different no doubt.
- So clearly there is something different going on between them and I'd wager as said that it's filtering. Irrespective of the reasons, I think it's enough to show there's an audible difference and that contrary to my own belief just 6 months ago, not all DACs sound the same and that SINAD is not a reliable way to 'score' a DAC.