Donnie,

I’m in the same boat. I have a Directstream dac (Mk I), and a Border Patrol dac that are my primary ones. (I have a couple of others, but they don’t seem to make it into my regular rotation).

My research has been into the following:
Directstream dac (Mk II)
Holo May KTE
Linear Tube Audio Aero (a new product for them)
Space Tech Lab DA-512DSD-2-Super

I have to say that mostly what I’ve done so far is confuse myself. I do like the idea of being able to change the sound with various tubes in the Space Tech Lab, but I don’t seem to be any closer to pulling the trigger on anything than when I started looking. I’ll be watching to see what recommendations you get. Good luck with your search.

Randy

Donnie….back earlier this year I went by Kamran’s for a listening session.  He has the Holo Spring 3 KTE and I was blown away how great it sounded. I I can only bet that that Holo May DAC would be an end game DAC.  

While I’m not in the market for a DAC right now…I have always said that that Holo or Denefrips would be my top 2 pics, in that order.  Moving up the Denefrips line sounds like a great plane as long as you are happy with the sound signature.  But I would personally seek out a listening session with the Holo before I made a final decision.

P.S. Vinshine Audio is getting out of the Denafrips business and is having a closeout sale until August 10th, so you can get a really good deal if you do it in the next couple of days.

Forgot to mention…a second DAC on my radar is the new LTA Aero tube DAC.  Great reviews but $3950 with a 14 day return and 10% restocking plus shipping  and 5% credit processing fee is a pricey tryout.  

https://www.lineartubeaudio.com/products/aero-dac-digital-analog-converter

Last year, I bought a used Holo Audio May DAC for $4k via AudioMart. You might want to consider a similar approach.

Hey Donnie,

I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet, or if you put any stock in The Audiophiliac’s reviews, but he has spent some time with the LTA Aero, and seems pretty impressed.

duck://player/drwOEzSzBdE

I will also say that I have several LTA components, including their Ultralinear amp, and they don’t disappoint.

Randy

I am not looking in the same league as you all with these $4,000.00 DACs. But my humble Schiit DAC fried and I am looking to replace it.

Jim,

Below $600 Cambridge Audio CXN V2. Several options at Crutchfield Audio: https://www.crutchfield.com/S-eVa9Ow8mZji/p_779CXCV2G/Cambridge-Audio-CXC-v2-Lun...

HK

Jim,

There is a Cambridge Audio CXN for sale on our classifieds. Recommended!

Geno

Anybody have any experience with the Holo Cyan 2 DAC? Ron at New Record Day says that it is quite close to the May DAC and it is considerably less expensive.

Hi Donnie!
When the Fiio K11 arrives, do you plan to compare it directly with the old set and share your experience?

Guess what?
We have been throwing our money away on expensive DAC's!

Well, possibly not, but maybe so.

My Fiio K11 R2R DAC arrived yesterday, delivered by a hippyish looking UPS driver. Their grooming standards have dropped in the last few years, but then again I haven't had a haircut since last November, so who am I to complain.

I rushed into the house with it and opened up the box. Real nice packaging, fancy box and the instructions were in a fancy envelope inside.

It came with everything a person would need to hook it up including a A to C usb cable, nice.

I hooked it up to both my computer and my ZKIT60 amp.
I used Amazon's best $7.00 RCA interconnects to tie it all together, come on, it is a $160 DAC, no use using anything expensive.

Well then it was time to figure out how to set it up.
They must think that I am polylingual because the instruction book is in ten languages. I didn't study languages at MIT*, I took more technical studies.

So after about 38 minutes of squintin' and a lookin' at the instructions in my native tongue of Gibberish, I got it going.
The hard thing was figuring out how to navigate the menu to put the DAC into DAC only mode and to turn on the NOS mode.
I also had to tell my JRiver to output to the Fiio in WASPI.

Well, I then started playing music through the DAC and was truly impressed with how holographic the sound was.
I should back up a tad and tell you what I was using, speaker wise and so on. The speakers are a pair of 5" Tang Band full range drivers in a decent, almost too big for a desk, front ported boxes. Sitting 3" from the wall, 4' between them and 3' from my ears. Near field to the extreme.
They produce a strange effect, the soundstage is right there in front of you, just there.

So back to the DAC.
It seems to really make the soundstage come alive. Sounds are floating around in space in a really interesting way, kind of intoxicating.

So is it worth $160?  I'd say yep, but I've only spent a few hours with it so far. Is it better than the Wadia that I had in before, yep, by a whole lot.
I do want to add in that what I am hearing might be because I changed over to the ZKIT 60 at the same time.

I'll run it in for a month or two then slip it in my main system to see how it compares to my Denafrips Ares II. You never know if something is better without listening them side by side.
Time will tell.




*Mississippi Institute of Truckin'
I majored in Backin', Gear Jammin', and Doughnut Eatin'!

I’m with you, CA, digital sounds so good and is so convenient that my records rarely come out- and I have no patience for getting up to flip or change a record.

But back to subject. My first introduction to convenient digital after CD’s was an iFi zen Bluetooth box. I used it with my UFO and it sounded better, I thought, than the denefrips ares2 (though I have a personal distaste for the ares2). I only changed from this Bluetooth DAC to a real streamer and DAC because my cell data couldn’t handle my listening addiction.

My CXNv2 streaming hi-res definitely sounds better than the Bluetooth and iFi, but not by a huge margin. There are other flaws in my system that bug me more.

Quote:


Yes. I was a (very) early adopter of CD, but it quickly became clear that the SQ from a lot of my records was superior to even the best digital. And I bought thousands of records, mostly used for a buck or two in the 80s and early 90s as everyone else was dumping vinyl for CDs. But I kept searching for good digital and was also an early adopter of SACD, which was an improvement but had reliability issues (long story, don't ask) and was expensive.

Finally, a few years before I discovered Decware I thought I had the solution: using a pretty high end Yamaha SACD player as a DAC with a CD transport and a laptop to play SACD rips and downloads. It wasn't as good as vinyl but it was close enough, and a lot more convenient. Then I got my UFO amps the gap between digital and analog jumped. So I upgraded again, thanks in part to Donnie talking up Denafrips. And while it would be crazy to say I've got my end game digital for forever, I haven't had any interest in new gear.

So I got a little antsy today, it is half raining outside and I'm waiting for finishes to dry up on my newest project speakers. So I unhooked my new Fiio K11 R2R DAC from my desktop system and moved it to my "main" system.

The Fiio has been on continually since last week when it arrived, so it has well over 120 hours of "on time". It has played a lot of music and more than its share of YouTube videos.

A couple of days ago I had tried playing some 24/192 through it without any luck until I read through the manual and discovered that I hadn't downloaded the USB drivers when I downloaded the latest update version.
With that done the DAC eats everything I threw at it including when I told my JRiver to output in DSD. I didn't hear a bit of difference so I went back to just outputting in PCM.

So back to today's story.

Everything was unplugged from my desktop system and moved over to the big stereo.
The Denafrips was unhooked and the Fiio was plugged into its place, the JRiver was changed over to play the Fiio (after I downloaded the USB drivers) and I then let 'er rip!

First impressions are that it is around 95% as good as my Denafrips Ares II.
The Fiio isn't quite as sharp, slightly veiled, and I mean slightly.
I've been listening to the Denafrips for several years and I know what it sounds like so it is easy to tell the differences.

The Fiio isn't as focused as the Denafrips, but again by only a small amount.

So I guess the big question is if the $160 Fiio is worth its price vs. the $800 Denafrips. I would have to say yes.

Is it for your main system with hand picked tubes and your $2000 speaker cables sitting on risers, maybe, (especially if you blew your budget on the risers) I'm pretty sure that they would do in a pinch. You aren't really loosing much, a few percent I'd say, to a much more expensive DAC.

Where I see the Fiio's place is for a desktop or possibly a kitchen or maybe a bedroom system.





I should have taken time to wipe the front of my ZKIT60 off!

The first picture makes it looks like the ZKIT60 is wood grain, just the reflection of my desk!