Insane but I have spent nearly every waking hour with my LCD4s on and listing to the new Kassandra DAC. It is so addictive. I spoke to Stavros and he told me I can tune the sound a bit using the built in tube bias. I have it on 2.4 volts, and it can go up to 2.9v or as low as 1.8v. Right now, it sounds so good I'll leave it as it is for now.
With my previous DACs I had many USB to SPDIf convertors, Offramp5, M2Tech Evo stack, and got fed up with USB around 2015. I then output Ethernet using Dante with a Rednet 3 DAW to SPDIF. That beat any USB I could get my hands on, till now... I connected up the USB input tonight on the Kassandra, and it is better. At first it was difficult to tell, but I finally zeroed in on it. The treble is a tiny bit smoother, but dynamics have jumped up even more, and the soundstage just went super 3D, enormous, wow.
This is all good news, as besides my Redbook collection and some high res, I also use Tidal Masters which can 88.2 or 96K, and USB is easier to manage the sample rates.
I will do a big review soon with pics, and will compare to the CH Precision C1, DAVE, Audio Note DAC 5 etc. But I am realising all those DACs in my mind, to my ears did some things right, but failed in other areas. So maybe they were all wrong? My best comparison of that would be the speed and transparency of the C1, the midrange of the DAC 5, and the bass of, well none of them, just off the scale good, that and the incredible dynamics, best I have heard in any digital. Pity I have no TT to compare it to, and I have no mates near me who have one either.
More to come.....