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I Bought The World's Best DAC

Posted by CharlesHouston on November 25, 2000 at 18:21:29

At least I hope that it is The World's Best DAC.

My system reflects the advice of audio gurus more than it does my own auditions. I don't apologize for that even though it violates rules, like "listen to a component before you buy it" and "do it yourself." (You wouldn't defend a decision to pass the scalpel to a surgeon for him remove your adenoids, would you?) I have just mailed a $4000 deposit for what is supposed to be The World's Greatest DAC to replace the modified Altius Refereence DAC that I now have.

I can tell you what it is, but not who will make it.

The manufacturer produces a decent consumer and an older DAC in its pro-audio line. A friend was able to convince the maker to take the older pro-audio DAC, make certain modifications, and produce four units for sale. We would buy the entire production run from him. Another manufacturer might be asked to make a few more modifications.

This new DAC is supposed to be extremely musical and do all the requiste DAC-ish things with a high degree of excellence. This is awfully vague and seems like insufficient reason to part with almost $10,000, but my guru has a great track record and is putting his money where his ears are by buying one of these himself. Most recently he told me to sell my most excellent Lamm L1 preamp and replace it with the new L2. "Why? How can any linestage be better than my L1? I challenged him. "Because the L2 is like the L1 but better in every respect" was his answer. He was the guru and I was his student, so I took a flyer. I am glad I did---the Lamm L2 is a stunning component that elevated my system's performance by a remarkable amount. In particular, the Kharma Ceramique 1.0s sounded as if they had an extra octave of bass extension, and every note was even more palpable than before.

This new DAC is suppposed to make the same kind of cosmic improvement. I'll find out in late January when it arrives.

These DAC threads mentioned a lot of excellent equipment and I'll pass along my friend's conclusions on some of them. He believes that the Audio Note (UK) DAC5 is as good as our mystery DAC, but it costs $40,000. He likes the Levinson and says that the Metronome is a good DAC for $4000 or whatever it costs. The Accuphase has the family Accuphase sound that seems old-fashioned. He doesn't like dCS. The Boulder and Burmester are cold. The Ensemble is not musical. The Dodson has a different sound from my Altis but wouldn't represent significant improvement, if at all.

Neither of us has heard the Zanden Audio DAC from Japan, a $15,000 component being imported by Jay Bertrand who also imports Forsell. I bought my CD transport from Jay and trust his ears, so I ordered a Zanden DAC when he told me about it. Unfortunately the transformer supplier, Tango, has danced its way into bankruptcy and that pushed Zanden's delivery until some unspecified time into the New Year. I faced a dilemma: waiting to try the Zanden would mean that someone else would get the last of the custom DACs from this limited production run so I would never be able to audition both. I had to decide based only on recomendations. I trust both guys, but Jay is in the business of selling these things while my friend is buying one of the custom DACs for himself...

...so I'll buy one for myself. I'll also cross my fingers.

(Thanks to everyone who suggested DACs.)

Charles Houston
Fieldstone Farm
Paeonian Springs, Virginia

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