Best alternative: Preamp with built in DAC chip or Modern DAC

[Blizzard]

on your myth busting thread you both mentioned me by name and called me out by name and then inferred to me as a 'known vinyl enthusiast'.

so if you don't want me on your threads then stop bringing me up.

I thought calling you a "known vinyl enthusiast" and putting enough weight on your listening abilities would have been a compliment. Wanting you to take part in that panel is proof of how much your opinion would be valued. I'm sorry for having this level of faith in you, and I'll never do this again.

 

[Blizzard]

Blizzard, your assumptions that the NADAC is 100% neutral just because it is of pro provenance and has Sabres in it is such a leap of faith it made my eyes water. I suppose next years Merging and Sabre's next chip will now be colored because they already got it 100% now. Perfect sound forever, all over again.

That's not what I said. What I said was it was designed to be transparent, as opposed to most "audiophile" gear being designed to have a "house sound"

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I thought calling you a "known vinyl enthusiast" and putting enough weight on your listening abilities would have been a compliment. Wanting you to take part in that panel is proof of how much your opinion would be valued. I'm sorry for having this level of faith in you, and I'll never do this again.

I took no offense, and did feel respected by you.

my comments above only relate to why I responded, not that I had a problem. you were the one asking me not to comment

 

[dallasjustice]

I'm going to have a Mola Mola Kaluga with DAC soon. Bruno prefers to use his analog volume control instead of digital volume control in the Makua. I don't know how it will sound in my system and I'm not going to pretend to know what the "best" DAC is with volume is going to be. I can give three pieces of advice if you don't get a separate pre and go with digital volume control:
1. Make sure the DAC is gain matched for the rest of your system. Nobody here can do that for you. You will need to know the sensitivity of your speakers, your amp's gain, your listening room characteristics and the total output voltage of your DAC. Every system is different. My old system requires 18dbu of DAC output which is around 6vrms. My next system will only require maybe 4vrms. With the Makua, this means I'll be using much more attenuation than I am using now since the Makua puts out a max of 20dbu. All that attenuation is no problem because the Makua uses state of the art analog attenuation. If I were to use digital attenuation in such a setup, it wouldn't likely sound as good. I'd be using 30-40db of digital attenuation. That's not good, IMO.
2. Make sure the digital volume control doesn't require more than 20db or so of attenuation. Beyond that, there may be digital artifacts. Maybe not but its better to keep digital volume control within a narrow band.
3. Make sure the DAC's output impedance is sufficient to drive your amp. If it's not, the bass may not sound as snappy and tight as it should; eg. PSaudio direct stream DAC.

You can estimate how much max voltage you'll want to have based on your current DAC's output. There's probably a formula out there somewhere too. There are analog volume controls which rival top digital ones in terms of transparency. If you find one you like, this gives you some versatility. IOW, if your system changes drastically in terms of sensitivity, the analog volume control will never need to be replaced. Having said all that, it's very difficult to find an analog attenuator which can compete with TPDF dithered 64bit or even 32bit volume control well implemented. The SABRE DACs use 32bit digital attenuation. There are other DAC digital attenuators which are likely better; eg. TotalDAC. However, hqplayer and Jriver 21 offer 64 bit TPDF. I believe hqplayer even offers a shaped dither as well as Acourate Convolver. I hope that helps you.

Michael.

 

[PeterA]

That's not what I said. What I said was it was designed to be transparent, as opposed to most "audiophile" gear being designed to have a "house sound"

Let's be a bit more precise. This is what you actually said in post #58, Blizzard:

Out of the above mentioned components, the Spectral's are likely designed to be the most transparent. Pretty much all "audiophile" components are specifically tuned to a "house sound". Some have more coloration than others. But the coloration is intentional, not by accident. Merging products on the other hand are unique. As they are specifically designed for lack of coloration. This is because they are from the pro recording world. They build stuff made to be 100% true to the source. This might not be of taste to some, but that's how they build things. If you don't like the sound, it means you don't like the sound of the recording. Simple as that.

HQplayer is a phenomenal companion to components like this. It's because it can allow you to develop your own "house sound" based on your own personal tastes.

 

[Blizzard]

Let's be a bit more precise. This is what you actually said, Blizzard:

Yes that's how they build their products. That's also why when R2R quad DSD copies are made with their gear and directly compared again the R2R, trained human ears can't tell them apart.