I currently own an EMM Labs DAC2X. I'm thinking of making a change. Here's why:
I always seem to be fighting a hardness in the upper treble, especially on vocals (obviously worse on pop/rock than jazz). I've spent considerable amount of effort trying to adjust speaker positioning to ameliorate this to varying degrees of success. Yesterday I borrowed a friend's new DAC - an Auralic Vega. While not as good as my DAC, it did have a warmer presentation and was much more enjoyable on a lot of music. It got me thinking that maybe my DAC is just a tad on the lean side and that a warmer DAC would synergize better in my system.
The only other DAC I have ever heard is the Berkely Alpha Series I. I would be looking for a USB DAC that can handle DSD. It needs to be very resolving but not fatiguing.
One DAC that comes to mind is the Playback Designs but not having heard it I don't know its character. For all I know it would be a move in the wrong direction.
Thoughts?
I always seem to be fighting a hardness in the upper treble, especially on vocals (obviously worse on pop/rock than jazz). I've spent considerable amount of effort trying to adjust speaker positioning to ameliorate this to varying degrees of success. Yesterday I borrowed a friend's new DAC - an Auralic Vega. While not as good as my DAC, it did have a warmer presentation and was much more enjoyable on a lot of music. It got me thinking that maybe my DAC is just a tad on the lean side and that a warmer DAC would synergize better in my system.
The only other DAC I have ever heard is the Berkely Alpha Series I. I would be looking for a USB DAC that can handle DSD. It needs to be very resolving but not fatiguing.
One DAC that comes to mind is the Playback Designs but not having heard it I don't know its character. For all I know it would be a move in the wrong direction.
Thoughts?