Current Crop of R-2R DACs

edwyun

Super Member
I'm looking for a possible replacement for a Sonic Frontiers DAC. Non-oversampling R-2R. What are some of the current ones out there (below say $3K USD)?

I have heard of the Denafrips but not others.
 
Metrum Acoustics offers a wide range of NOS R-2R units. Some Audio-GD models are NOS as well.
 
No need for passive/aggressive sarcasm.
IMO there are none that are worth mentioning because NOS is just a bad way to reproduce PCM.
PS: La Voce is not NOS.
 
Sarcasm aside, as a former EE major and after doing some research on the subject I think I have a good understanding of the issues inherent with the NOS approach. These issues likely explain why some material just doesn't sound all that well through NOS. I do, however, immensely enjoy acoustic material such as jazz through a NOS DAC as it gets through as close to a live performance as I heard without leaving my home, the fact there is not much information above 10kHz in such music likely have something to do with it, I have yet to hear a OS DAC with this kind of realism but I'm sure they do exist. And you can still OS the music that doesn't sound well on NOS in software before the DAC, and you're not limited to the interpolating filter that your OS DAC manufacturer bundled with the device, so I don't consider a good NOS DAC that can support high sampling rates to be any sort of compromise. And NOS is less of an issue for hi-res/hi-sampling rate material. YMMV depending on the gear downstream of the NOS DAC and personal preferences, but I'm a happy camper so far.

PS: I'm on Sonic's ignore list, so likely I'm preaching to the choir
 
Last edited:
I would check into that Lampizator guy. Forget his name but he was huge into NOS.

He would be way below $3k.
 
They say: "Proprietary DFD (Direct From Decoder) digital decoding without digital filter".
Also they say: "R2R type converters in DFD configuration: - cod. D104 - Burr Brown PCM1704 (2 dac) - sign magnitude R2R ladder DAC 24bit / 192 kHz - cod. D101 - Philips TDA1541A - R2R 16 bit / 96 kHz (R1, S1 grade selection on request) - cod. D165 - Analog Devices AD1865 - R2R 18 bit / 192 kHz"

96 and 192kHz. That doesn't mean NOS.
 
It may just mean these are the supported sampling frequencies you can send to the DAC which are ultimately restricted by what the DAC chip can process, it doesn't mean it is oversampling, in fact the spec say it is x1 oversampling ratio, which means NOS as far as I understand.
 
Besides chip based (like the UltraAnalog D20400A in my Sonic Frontiers), there are newer surface mount resistor based R-2R DACs.
 
Sonic

Like a lot of people here, I am tired of arguing with you about things you nothing about except what you read on the internet. How about trying or owning something before spouting your opinion as fact.
 
audio gd makes excellent dacs. for newer models I've seen many like the holo audio r2r dacs. and theres schiit obviously, kind of a boring choice tho haha

https://kitsunehifi.com/product/springdacred/

if I were you I would go read on head-fi's forum for dedicated soruce components. INSANE amount of information about all NOS r2r dacs, with opinions from many who have owned a plethora of units.
 
Besides chip based (like the UltraAnalog D20400A in my Sonic Frontiers), there are newer surface mount resistor based R-2R DACs.

Metrum builds their custom DAC modules in house, and their higher end offerings have 2 modules per channel in differential mode, cool stuff.
 
if I were you I would go read on head-fi's forum for dedicated soruce components. INSANE amount of information about all NOS r2r dacs, with opinions from many who have owned a plethora of units.

I'm on that forum as well but not been there in a while. I'll delve a bit further. Thx.
 
Sonic

Like a lot of people here, I am tired of arguing with you about things you nothing about except what you read on the internet. How about trying or owning something before spouting your opinion as fact.
Unlike many people here I am an electrical engineer that has a hobby in electronics for several decades (since I was 14 years old). All my DAC/amps are modded, I build my NOS CD player from a Philips player with TDA1541 some 8 years ago. Didn't like the sound. Build a DAC kit with that TDA1543 from eBay. Didn't like it sending straight 44.1kHz audio to it, the only way that was half way decent was to upsample in the Foobar before sending it to the "NOS" DAC.
What I was hearing, might sound for some that is "more musical", but it results in un-natural sounding instruments. It's called aliasing.
The brain gets used to that sound eventually, and every other DAC will "sound bad". When going to a live venue, the original instrument will "sound bad" too.

If you like that, more power to you. I am a purist.
 
It's called aliasing.

As an electrical engineer you could at least get your terminology straight. There is no aliasing in the DAC, it is called mirroring or imaging. You can't hear mirror frequencies, if you think you do it is only your imagination. You could hear inter-modulation distortion frequencies and other nasties from your amp if it can't deal with ultrasonics, but it is not mirror frequencies you hear and it is completely unrelated to aliasing which is an artifact of ADC.
 
Last edited:
And you still haven't addressed the fact that you have never seen or heard the Aqua DAC's and your "opinion" not fact is based only on what you read somewhere. Try reading some more or actually listen before you comment. That EE you claim to have has nothing to do with this discussion. As we have discussed before, your wanting to build and mod is irrelevant to someone who wants to just buy something.
 
Back
Top Bottom