Opinions On Musician Taurus DAC

[Chrisl]

I'm looking at R2R dacs with I2S. Has anyone had any experience with this brand or dac? I found a Taurus for $3200. I was also considering Denafrips but not sure about the longevity of the company. And I'd have to double the money to get something more interesting from Denafrips like the Venus 15th which has dual (and better by the looks) power supplies for $4k. The Musicians Taurus isn't as well known, so just looking for any opinons.
Thanks so much!

 

[audio.bill]

If you're concerned about the longevity of Denafrips you should realize that Musician products are reportedly manufactured in the same factory.

 

[Chrisl]

I heard there were similar designers, I didn’t know same factory. Thank you for letting me know.

 

[johndoe21ro]

I am also curious about this DAC! Anyone... ?

 

[Chrisl]

I demoed one for over a month. Classic R2R, highly resolving/detailed, fantastic soundstage depth and width, and very for me, kind of boring. There was little midrange presence. Voices detailed but no realism.
I have an old Soekris dac and the sound is similar. I don't know if all R2R dacs are like this, but boy, they sure don't do it for me.

 

[V-Fi]

Reviving an old thread because I just spent some time trying out the Musician Taurus. I agree with the post above that it had a lot of strengths but was also a little boring. Like it didn't do anything really wrong, but just failed to engage me like my favorite DACs do.

However I also auditioned their Aquarius which was the top model before Taurus came out, and I found it more enjoyable. Also pretty resolving, great staging etc but had a little more "meat" to the sound. The tonality was more to my liking and it did not trade a ton of technicalities to achieve that either.

I ended up buying the Aquarius for a 2nd (or maybe 3rd) system that I am tinkering with now. To my ears it is better than all the Denafrips models I've tried (haven't heard all of them), similar in some ways but imho a better balance of resolution and emotion. The only caveat is that it really sounds best with I2S, if you can't feed it that way it becomes a lot less special.