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DAC advice?

kenpoguy

kenpoguy

New Member
Greetings all!
I have a chance to improve my CD front end, I'm just not sure if this will be an upgrade or not. the sound presently is very detailed but at times a bit shrill in the high end.
I currently have a sony XA20ES CD player that has an amazing transport. the DAC is something called a current pulse DAC, also this is the American model that has a toslink optical digital output.
I may be able to get a Music Fidelity X-24K, with the X- PSU power supply at an affordable price. I read on line that this DAC is a 24 bit delta sigma DA chip 8X oversampling. I have tried to find out which DAC is better but could not find anything on the internet. I did read how connecting an external DAC is not favored by some people. any help would be appreciated. thank you.

Associated equipment:
Phase Linear 330 preamp
Adcom GFA 5400 amp
KLH model Nine speakers
 
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@kenpoguy

Role the dice if you will prefer any new DAC to your current player.
The only sure bet will be to trial one and you decide. No different than many of choices in the Audio world.

Do you intend to do streaming or anything else down the road with a new Dac?

Personally I was quite impressed with the Improvement SQ wise when I went with a new Dac
that allowed me to use an AES/EBU output into the Dac, made many so so sounding CD's now enjoyable and pretty good sounding one's even better.

One of the biggest gains in SQ I've experienced comparable to room treatments.
 
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totem said:
Role the dice if you will prefer any new DAC to your current player.
The only sure bet will be to trial one and you decide. No different than many of choices in the Audio world.

Do you intend to do streaming or anything else down the road with a new Dac?

Personally I was quite impressed with the Improvement SQ wise when I went with a new Dac
that allowed me to use an AES/EBU output into the Dac, made many so so sounding CD's now enjoyable.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply. I do not intend to do any streaming on this system. I only stream in the car. I prefer to play CDs, and LPs, and I loved to play SACDs up until my player broke!
 
Your Sonys built in DAC is fine. Chances are it’s your speakers or room that are bright and you need EQ to correct it.
 
Not sure about your budget, but I'd recommend looking into a DAC from Schiit Audio. Particularly a Multibit model. I've owned 4 different Schiit DACs, and have been impressed with each one. Best thing to do is get a DAC and listen in your system to see what sounds best to you.
 
I have a Schiit Modi 3+ that I enjoy. I was thinking about getting the multibit but production delays have made that unavailable until the end of the year.
 
davidflas said:
Not sure about your budget, but I'd recommend looking into a DAC from Schiit Audio. Particularly a Multibit model. I've owned 4 different Schiit DACs, and have been impressed with each one. Best thing to do is get a DAC and listen in your system to see what sounds best to you.
Click to expand...
Thank you, I have heard a lot of good things about Schiit products. considering an outboard DAC is new to me I will take a look!
 
I have a Modius I’ve been using for about a year+ now. Very nice sounding @ it’s price point. This is my second DAC from Schiit. Started out with a Modi II.
 
Not to hijack but wondering if I should swap out the MF V Dac in my main system for a Modi 3 I have.The original V Dac is still decent apparently. Entertaining the Topping E30 if it might make enough of a difference to be worth while.
 
Recent Toppings have issues with their SPDIF inputs, they don’t work reliably with some sources. USB is fine.
 
Get the Musical Fidelity combo, the X series is good, one of the last to still be assembled in the UK, and very easy to work on. You could then also try one of the X-10D buffers to go between the CD player and amp.
 
richie60 said:
No problems with mine. I’m using an Audiolab CDT6000 into the Topping D70s via coax.
Click to expand...

The D70s is an earlier model that uses an AKM SPDIF receiver so it's not affected. The issues started after Topping switched to CS8416 in some of their DACs as AKM parts were in short supply after the factory fire, they later switched to yet another chip but the issues remained.
 
gvl said:
The D70s is an earlier model that uses an AKM SPDIF receiver so it's not affected. The issues started after Topping switched to CS8416 in some of their DACs as AKM parts were in short supply after the factory fire, they later switched to yet another chip but the issues remained.
Click to expand...

@gvl is this documented anywhere? I've seen you post similar remarks many times before.

(Edit: for example: have these manufacturers acknowledged and issued responses concerning this issue?)
 
There is a multitude of reports about this on ASR. Here’s a post by one of the Topping engineers sort of acknowledging the issue:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...g-d90se-review-balanced-dac.24235/post-834419

They used a different chip in the D90SE but the issue remained at least to some extent, you can browse the D90SE thread on ASR.

Not long time ago someone on AK reported an issue with a recent iteration of the E30 that now used the CS chip, he couldn’t get it to work reliably with his CDP, you can search for it here.

It’s hard to say if Topping is at fault or this is due to the limitations of the chip, but the issue appears to be real.
 
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I have a few DAC/Amps myself and was wondering for you cats setup with CD listening endpoints, what CD players are you using? I moved to streaming pretty quickly, but still have a box of CDs collecting dust that I could use with the addition of a CD player and let the DAC to speakers improve playback, but have my old CD/AM FM radio combos from childhood that are likely to not provide quality output. Any other threads I should check on this? What players are you using?
 
DonTeflon said:
I have a few DAC/Amps myself and was wondering for you cats setup with CD listening endpoints, what CD players are you using? I moved to streaming pretty quickly, but still have a box of CDs collecting dust that I could use with the addition of a CD player and let the DAC to speakers improve playback, but have my old CD/AM FM radio combos from childhood that are likely to not provide quality output. Any other threads I should check on this? What players are you using?
Click to expand...

I've ripped quite a few of my CD's, but I still have a big bunch to rip, and then got a huge box of CD's from a collector a while back. Some of it's stuff I want to keep and some not so much, but I like to listen to it before I rip it. So I came across some threads on here about the old Sony ES SACD/DVD/CD players. You can find them for not too much money and they were really high end back in the day. Worth checking them out (example of the NC555ES below) or any of the ES models -- the OP said he has a sony XA20ES CD

 
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