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In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: DAC Recommendations

Post Subject: Special dac for little moneyPosted by miab on: 7/12/2013

I was tipped off to a dac over at the proaudio forum Gearslutz. It is usually difficult to gauge those users references as most are responsible for many of the bad habits in audio record engineering. One user who I seem to agree philosophically with regarding the audio industry and his extreme experience with the technical side of audio recommended to me an inexpensive dac. His comments have mostly been erased from the forums for some reason. It is a Ross Martin audio dac but particularly the Gearslutz version. I purchased it with the intention of an office system for casual listening but soon came to realise that something very special was happening. I brought it down to my main system for proper evaluation. I compared it to a Bidat fully updated and another 16 bit dac of comparable quality. The Ross Martin does some things better than both not to mention the capability to play high data feeds. If not for the Bidat's wonderful upperbass/lower midrange grainy density it would now be permanently in my main system. In a different acoustic system or with different transport I could see the Ross being a better choice.

I mention this dac to you because jumping from dac to dac at various listening sessions outside the home and in the home, over time you might find referencing each dac to each other might be difficult. This little inexpensive dac does very many things very well and it can travel with you to different auditions. It could be your ruler of sorts. I also would not be surprised if it did not better most everything out there. I have heard most. It is a little ugly, can run two or more transports (cd/16bit, higher res,...) and is very cheap. DON'T dismiss it because of price though.

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