Expensive Dacs. Are they worth it?

[terrybooth]

£30 Chromecast is my starting point! I've eMailed Dave (MCRU) we'll see how we get on.

[CN211276]

I will be very interested. The Mojo was a lot better than the previous Audioquest Dragonfly I was using. I now have the new Dragonfly Black for portable device use only. Have not tried it through my system, but the Mojo is significantly better with my Grado head phones. No difference with my far cheaper AKG ones for out and about and holidays.

[Classicrock]

It wouldn't surprise me if the latest Beresford Caiman SEG comes close to Chord and other expensive DACs. Producing my best ever digital sound with the CXC. Can't see how they justify the pricing on some of these products.

An interesting conversation for me as I've owned a Beresford (and iFi Micro and Schiit Bifrost) and currently own a Chord 2qute which I compared to a Metrum Musette and an Auralic Vega before buying. I didn't rate the Beresford at all, but at that time I was only using it to try to pep-up an old cd player rather than play the higher res files that I mostly listen to now. My system also looked very different to how it does now. I thought the Metrum did a lot of things very well but that the Chord is more resolving - more music, more emotion, clearer and more transparent. Be very interested to hear the latest Beresfords if they might seriously challenge the 2qute.

The new one has 4 different settings from 0 to 3 and No 3 sounds stellar. Surprising difference in listenability between them. This has been discussed on TAS forum at greater length. Those who have gone through each version think it is a major improvement on previous models.

[George Hincapie]

I have owned two Beresfords and neither were in the same league as the Metrum Musette. As stock, the Beresford is poor and requires a quality LPSU to deliver an acceptable performance. It uses stock DAC chips and doesn't even run two or more chips in dual differential mode. A good DAC to start with, but that's it.

The Chord v Metrum debate is less straight forward. I have never listened to a Chord, but given their use of FPGA technology I would expect them to be fairly close in performance.

[Classicrock]

If I start a DAC thread will someone move the off topic posts to it ?

It's here! https://hifisubjectivist.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=48681

[Classicrock]

I'm getting great results from Caiman SEG. Others suggest it is basic? (This is to facilitate the discussion on the MCRU thread to continue)

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

That is for Terry to do if you ask him or he notices.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I am bringing a very cheap DAC to Uddersfield next Sunday.

[Simon Hickie]

on top of that one Chord employee tried once convicted me that there is a musical difference in USB cable even make me try all of them from 100GBP to 3000GBP... well 3k for a USB cable says it all...

I have certainly heard a difference between USB cables. The best I've heard is the one I made myself: £20 or so in materials and a bit of careful soldering. My cable only has the signal wires and no power wires. However, this will only work with some DACs. The Audioquest range seem to offer good value at their various price points.

With some DACs, a 'splitter' cable can be used whereby the signal and power components are separated with the power section just being used for the handshake between DAC and computer before being removed from the computer.

[Ithilstone]

Well I am not saying that there is no difference but I will also admit that I never heard difference between USB cables (unless they damaged or faulty) and connected to non faulty DAC... I am open to try new things though.

Maybe I just have a set of bad ears or maybe there is confirmation bias at play