Just got a DacMagic...

[Primalsea]

I've just won a Dacmagic 2 from Ebay, it hasn't arrived yet and has a fault on one audio channel. I should be able to fix that no problem unless its a unlikely problem with the DAC chips. In which case I have some spare DAC chips anyway. I haven't herd one of these before but the specs seem very good, oddly good infact as it uses budget DAC chips.

It will be interesting as I recently bought a S/H Sonifex RB-ADDA DAC which is a peice of pro gear (£500 new). This uses a high performance Crystal DAC chip which I assumed would be a large step up from older chips. I was perplexed to find that it has a very similar sound to my Marantz CD94 with oversampling disabled, this has chips from 1984. The Sonifex does has slightly better detail across the frequencies though, but this is not night and day. I wonder how the Dacmagic will compare.

Refering to Ianm2 I find that a lot of expensive hifi is engineered to sound a particular way. You will find in nearly every case though that it is marketed in a way that puts across the opposite. That the sound you get is what happens when something is engineered properly.

Also IMHO topology & implementation is key. You just can't polish a turd, no matter how hard you try. If something has not been designed properly putting better components into a poor design is a waste.

[Clive]

my dacmagic made a decent case for a prototype phono stage - a fitting end for it IMHO

[Primalsea]

I'll reserve judgment until I hear mine but it is possible you may have actually polished a turd after all

[spikeyfaz]

Paul, I hope you get on ok with your Dac Magic. They are quite good value s/h, but after living with mine for a year I reckon it's now time to move on. I fancy something with a bit more 'air' to the sound but I definitely don't want anything with valves glued onto the end as a buffer.

I wonder if it's worth having a go at modding my DacMagic? It doesn't owe me anything now, so if I mess it up I've still got a nice case for a phono-stage.....

[Primalsea]

I've just realised that we are in 2008 now and your posts were from last January

I agree with that just sticking a tube buffer on the output of something is not the way forward. I know this as I have tried it and it didn't work very well.

For dacs much better to make an active I/V stage with tubes if you want them in. This is what Tentlabs does as well as many other well designed CDPs and dacs. The gimmick ones just have a un necessary tube buffer butted to the end of it.

There any amny other things to do to dacs and CDPs apart from just sticking bespoke audiophile components in. I've had success with modifying the output filters.

Many filters are brickwall filters at just over 20khz even if the dac is oversampling. I thought the point of oversampling was so that brickwall filters wern't needed!

I've found that a 2nd order sallen key filter at 50khz is better. This is so even with non oversampling dacs.