I was informed today that all we need is a $129 Topping DAC, and all the high end gear we use is worthless.
We Are All Wasting Our Money....
- Thread starter TPJeff
- Start date
I love all the geniuses on Facebook that swear lamp cord is just the same as nordost gold. They must have some embarrassing systems. But hey, whatever floats their boat. I don't care. Just don't tell me it's no difference.
Yep. Because I can't afford it, or my wife won't let me have it, it doesn't exist... Have any of you seen "Cheap Audio Man" on YouTube?
Has 550 THOUSAND viewers. Every couple of days, he's uncovering a new "Scam" or "Conspiracy," exposing how we've all been gaslighted.
Has 550 THOUSAND viewers. Every couple of days, he's uncovering a new "Scam" or "Conspiracy," exposing how we've all been gaslighted.
And you are not sharing the model with us? Please do not invoke the first amendment to protect your source, WBF is just a friendly audiophile forum!
Sure. Unfortunately just in the last few days I have heard a direct comparison on CD playback between a $300 Topping DAC and a Schiit Yggdrasil LIM DAC ($2,200). Well, for the money the Topping was impressive, I'll give it that. Yet it still wasn't the winner, not by a long shot. For example, vocals sounded much more natural on the Yggdrasil (also more natural than on a Holo May KTE DAC which was in the comparison as well; my friend and I agreed).
And this year I upgraded from the Yggdrasil to a Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC. I guess I must have thrown my money away then.
I have honestly seen that sort of thing with people saying that their computer desktop system is the end all of Hi Fi.
It’s myopic and self congratulatory.
That being said, I do admit to being absolutely amazed by how great ‘entry level’ sound has gotten.
WiiM, Bluesound, Fiio, Fosi, SMSL, Ayima….astoundingly high QPR.
I heard that BMR Advent-sized speaker with a WiiM integrated playing Tidal and was duly impressed. Plus, you can go even cheaper and have good sound!
It’s myopic and self congratulatory.
That being said, I do admit to being absolutely amazed by how great ‘entry level’ sound has gotten.
WiiM, Bluesound, Fiio, Fosi, SMSL, Ayima….astoundingly high QPR.
I heard that BMR Advent-sized speaker with a WiiM integrated playing Tidal and was duly impressed. Plus, you can go even cheaper and have good sound!
The way I see it, this hobby is a spiral. A spiral that easily gets out of control. If you have a system consisting of an integrated amp and speakers totaling 500 bucks, a DAC that costs a $129 makes sense, and you won't hear much that a 10k DAC brings to the table in such a system. You won't hear what an expensive power cord can do. Or speaker cables, etc, on and on. At this point in your journey, you likely haven't heard a lot of other systems, or understand fully what is possible at different price points, and how important setup and room treatments are, etc.
You continue to learn and grow. Once you upgrade your speakers to something on the next level, say a few grand, your amp or your sources start showing their weaknesses. You upgrade to amp separates worth 5 or 10k, and then you realize you need to upgrade your DAC. It never ends, but as you continue to upgrade, you understand better what you are after, what is possible, and what it costs.
At a certain point you start getting into cables and even if you start out slowly you do hear some differences, maybe not all the time, but it starts revealing more that your components can do. Once you start hearing what a good power foundation can do, and you've gotten to a certain level of gear and understand how to set it up properly and have your room treated, you are fully off to the races like most of us on this forum.
When someone says all you need is a $129 DAC, or lamp cord for speaker cables, or cheap power cables, they are right, in the context of a beginner. However these cheap components have limitations and you need the experience and the system to expose that. A lot of the time, when you see such statements on social media, it's helpful to remember that we all started somewhere and to those people, it does make a lot of sense to have a $129 DAC. They will spiral out of control just like we do, eventually
You continue to learn and grow. Once you upgrade your speakers to something on the next level, say a few grand, your amp or your sources start showing their weaknesses. You upgrade to amp separates worth 5 or 10k, and then you realize you need to upgrade your DAC. It never ends, but as you continue to upgrade, you understand better what you are after, what is possible, and what it costs.
At a certain point you start getting into cables and even if you start out slowly you do hear some differences, maybe not all the time, but it starts revealing more that your components can do. Once you start hearing what a good power foundation can do, and you've gotten to a certain level of gear and understand how to set it up properly and have your room treated, you are fully off to the races like most of us on this forum.
When someone says all you need is a $129 DAC, or lamp cord for speaker cables, or cheap power cables, they are right, in the context of a beginner. However these cheap components have limitations and you need the experience and the system to expose that. A lot of the time, when you see such statements on social media, it's helpful to remember that we all started somewhere and to those people, it does make a lot of sense to have a $129 DAC. They will spiral out of control just like we do, eventually
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