HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

Bloody hell that looks awful to me!!!! Still, each to your own...

I'm going to look at a Topping D30 instead. Neat little box that measures right, sounds good by all accounts and it has switching for inputs too.. All for eighty quid.

£5 Chinese DAC with decent power supply is all you need as You should know.

DSJR, it's not a finished product that's just the designers WIP lash up.

My aspirations for digital playback extend a little higher than those mentioned though, higher bit rates, Native DSD, none bit limited digital volume control, remote control, parametric EQ, network streaming, XLR outs and such like. I'm sure both the Topping and the Chinese unit de jour provide adequate playback for those whom they tick all the function boxes.

My box is music not hi-fi bollocks and that is the way these high priced high tech DACs are doing it. It is just the latest bullshit. The best DAC ever made was in 1987 by Sony, it was massive and very heavy as it was almost entirely discreet components. Since then the process has been about encapsulation and simplicity with really good interludes like the QED Digit. Now we are back in the old hi-fi problem people finding ways to bullshit more money from you, with unnecessary complication and finding anything new for the marketing men to spin around.

I will challenge anyone with my £5 Chinese Dac, good cable and good power supply, because that is all a DAC should cost. It is a couple of chips FFS it should only cost a fiver, unless you are a slurper.

Pride is a bad source of advice and I have been thinking to myself - 'well, I have an expensive DAC and it just has to be way better than Doc's 5 quid Chinese cheapie'.

But is that so?

My latest round of digital acquisition has left me convinced that DAC's are not as essential to the signal chain as one might think. They are roughly equivalent to a Phono stage in a TT system; taking one type of signal input and outputting that to a pre-amp. Good power supplies are important here - as is a good source. In an analogue system a quality cartridge/stylus in a well-set-up TT/arm. For digital this would be an uncompressed music file and Jitter-free data stream.

The Allo DigiOne Signature board is letting me experience how incredibly vital the synchronisation of the datastream is. The isolation from electronic nasties and a solid LPSU driving the clock-board only is a clear improvement. And the DAC, expensive or cheap(er) responds to this improved clarity with a resulting better SQ out of the speakers.

Maybe we should all be looking at budget DAC's and huge power-supplies (with a quality source, of course).

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not sure if you've ever had the chance to test this Doc but how would the Chinese cheapy compare to the Sony you mentioned?

what model was the sony by the way?

http://www.thevintageknob.org/sony-DAS-R1.html

Yes heard them side by side which is why I sold the Sony for a lot of money, they are like hens teeth. The Sony was better but by such a small amount it was laughable for the money involved, and IMO the fiver job was better in some ways.

This is becoming true of so many things in hi-fi, there is a new wave of rip off represented by these DACs and the likes of Kii. Expensive design and construction made over the top and bling has filled the market for the last decade getting worse and worse, it seems it has run its course, as the prices are now just so stooopid as they are up for comment. New way, take crap cheap design and bling it to justify prices and even more profit slurp (without it looking as bad) is the new way for the new companies. WAF speaker design, ClassD amplification, industrial programmable DAC chips blinged up to daft levels and daft prices.

Do you always have to fall for it?????????????? Some of you need to go and look at Ali-express to see what price things can be built for.

https://www.aliexpress.com/af/category/ ... x&jump=afs

I am thinking of listing there instead of ebay.

In my experience the power supplies don't have to be massive but it probably helps. I got massive gains from giving the dac chip in my cdp 3 separate psu's including transfomers. Three EI transformer windings of 2.5VA each have given excellent service for the past 3 years.