Standalone DACs under $10k?

No ugly babies here I’d say....

Attempting to keep with the OP I seriously can’t believe that Metrum Acoustics Pavane L3 (and Adagio) have not been thrown in the mix

I have had some amazingly high priced dacs through here and landed on the Pavane L3, now further upgraded with the DAC 3 chips just launched.

Spectacular and competes with anything and easily in the price range.

AMR DP 777se
Aqua la Scala , latest
Bricasti M1
Nyquest
Weiss

Are just what went through here in the last calendar year....in my system... to my preference .... the Metrum bested them all.

R2R NOS with a very very good power supply .

Metrum had a business hiccup but are back at it full tilt now with the original designer back at the helm.

To further the bliss as I did you can run Ethernet to their Roon end point ( the Amber) and then i2S from there to the dac

Economical , and incredible sonics
 
I think the Bricasti M3 looks super interesting sub-$10k.

The MSB Discrete is really quite a bit more as you need the renderer and extra power supply. If someone is looking for a used Premier with mono stock PS, I know where one can be found ;)
 
As a follow up, an audio club friend who owns an amazing system. MBL pre-amp, 2x MBL mono blocks, just recently upgraded MBL to higher end version speakers, ARC Ref 10 phono stage, etc.... just as a reference.

He does not up sample and honestly only uses his DAC for SACD playback. He owned (still owns) a dCS systems, which is very nice indeed. He recently purchased a pre-owned higher level model T+A spinner/DAC. He is blown away at how much better the T+A is than his dCS, again not using it for other digital sources though, just playing his SACDs. The T+A cost him less than 1/3 of what he paid for the dCS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top