[1KW]

Lars bought my Elipsa speakers (courtesy introductions through Ivan) speakers today and as part of our deal he brought with him a brand new sealed in the box direct stream dac (black which matches the Mcintosh) ,latest snow mass firmware installed. I’ve read a lot about this dac everyone who hears it has nothing but positive things to say . Let me say I was not expecting such a improvement in detail , sound stage, yet while still maintaining musicality. Sometimes with a lot of detail there is sacrifice in warmth and vice versa but I’m loving what I hear and what I am hearing is bringing nuances I never noticed before , this is a excellent dac. What is also amazing is that the performance of this dac is shocking. Instead of having a fixed dac on a chip , this dac uses fpga -field programable gate array hardware which allows the dac to be customized with software which ps audio does for free atleast once a year. How great is that a dac that stays up on the latest technology! You can install a network card which gives you full MQA , something not available 5 years ago when the dac first was introduced. Snow mass just came out a few months ago. Another cool thing about this dac is it is native DSD , hence the direct stream used in the name. You can read more about it , I highly recommend this DAC. Listening to vocals of Nora Jones, Stevie Nicks for example playing Redbook sounds like a SACD. I am just amazed at the sound stage, I finally get what Dan’s means in his reviews when he say more air between the instruments as I never experienced it in my system. My source took a step backward but I’m not noticing it, it’s a 2012 Mac mini running Roon as a core streaming tidal and playing music from the hd I have to say tidal sounds better. I will report back after I listen to qobuz. I played some Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, just fabulous. Like I said this dac is winner. Thanks Lars!