I'd bought the Gustard R26 during the Black Friday sale on Amazon.com.
I was initially quite impressed. After being consistently on since I got the DAC on November 28, I think the unit finally broke in. Total of about 350 hours.
It was a phased break-in process. The low end started blossoming after a week. Then the low notes began to exhibit extraordinary character. The mids were ok but seemed lean and not too real.
At one point, the mids came together which had became hyper-realistic. The best qualities of the DAC are the 3D and natural quality of the mid-range.
Call it break-in, or learning the sound, or adaptation, whatever it is, the R26 is truly an exceptional DAC. Thats not to say its better than others. What I hear is that it performs very well, very engaging, and checks all the audiophile points we look for. It gives a sound thats pretty unique to my ears. In summary, if a DAC could be a horn speaker with a 15 inch bass driver, this would be it. 10/10 highly recommended.
This January, I decided to let the Gustard R26 DAC go. It resolved like no other and imaging was pinpoint and more precise that anything I've ever heard. At the end of the day, the tone of the unit was not my bag. It did not have the same weight as my Denafrips Ares II with the exception of very low frequencies. Mid bass, was lean.
It was hard deciding to let it go. The R26 did so many things us audiophiles like, but was lacking on the most basic requirement. That is, a tone quality that I like. After much thought and research, I'm putting that onto the digital preamp that the R26 has. The Denafrips DAC pick up an analog signal directly at the end of its R2R ladder. The R26 has a discrete output stage which is likely adding its own character to the output.
BTW, I tried feeding the unit's renderer/streamer with an ethernet cable. I got it to work, but I did have drop outs, and never got the DAC to read more than 44.1k even though I was feeding it 192k content. Weird. It read 192k from my Node 2i, but it couldnt do it from its own streamer. I gave it a couple of hours, and then gave up on using its own streamer.
I was initially quite impressed. After being consistently on since I got the DAC on November 28, I think the unit finally broke in. Total of about 350 hours.
It was a phased break-in process. The low end started blossoming after a week. Then the low notes began to exhibit extraordinary character. The mids were ok but seemed lean and not too real.
At one point, the mids came together which had became hyper-realistic. The best qualities of the DAC are the 3D and natural quality of the mid-range.
Call it break-in, or learning the sound, or adaptation, whatever it is, the R26 is truly an exceptional DAC. Thats not to say its better than others. What I hear is that it performs very well, very engaging, and checks all the audiophile points we look for. It gives a sound thats pretty unique to my ears. In summary, if a DAC could be a horn speaker with a 15 inch bass driver, this would be it. 10/10 highly recommended.
This January, I decided to let the Gustard R26 DAC go. It resolved like no other and imaging was pinpoint and more precise that anything I've ever heard. At the end of the day, the tone of the unit was not my bag. It did not have the same weight as my Denafrips Ares II with the exception of very low frequencies. Mid bass, was lean.
It was hard deciding to let it go. The R26 did so many things us audiophiles like, but was lacking on the most basic requirement. That is, a tone quality that I like. After much thought and research, I'm putting that onto the digital preamp that the R26 has. The Denafrips DAC pick up an analog signal directly at the end of its R2R ladder. The R26 has a discrete output stage which is likely adding its own character to the output.
BTW, I tried feeding the unit's renderer/streamer with an ethernet cable. I got it to work, but I did have drop outs, and never got the DAC to read more than 44.1k even though I was feeding it 192k content. Weird. It read 192k from my Node 2i, but it couldnt do it from its own streamer. I gave it a couple of hours, and then gave up on using its own streamer.
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