Sold on the piece not the brand. Every link in your chain is important if you have a great system. Yes I was surprised when a silver interconnect made a huge improvement but it did. If you have a non capable piece in your chain upstream you won’t get the most out of your speakers regardless how great they are.
Its subjective really, it's whatever works best for the individual and if the "room" your system is set up in is terrible from a acoustic point of view all bets are off for good SQ not matter how much you paid for that interconnect, power cord, speaker wire, speakers or component for that matter
I probably should get around to comparing coax to optical from the Iris to the Qutest. If I do, I'll report back. Not really motivated to at the moment. If you haven't tried optical from the Iris, it might be worth trying an inexpensive one. If it's better sounding, the Lifatek probably will be even better. I went from a 6' $30 glass cable I already had (better than Wireworld USB direct to Qutest) to a 20" Lifatek and there was a definite improvement.
I’ve owned several DACs (Mytek, RME, iFi, and the one built into my McIntosh amp), but the Qutest is my favorite—warm and musical yet very detailed and revealing. The iFi DSD Pro sounded as good and has a great headphone amp, but mine kept locking up, so I returned it. The Qutest is hard to beat in its price range. A headphone amp would make it perfect!
Agreed 100% and tastes are subjective absolutely. If someone loves their sound in a stereo that cost $500 god bless them. It took me a ton of time and effort to get to the sound I was looking for.
Yeah I just grabbed a node to make it more convenient. I have only listened to a half a song so won’t know until tonight if it beats the usb. I’m just shocked being a vinyl only purist to now 66% of the time using the qutest. It brings some serious detail without being thin or harsh.
I use the Qutest with a Stack Audio Link 2 , it sound great to me and the streamer has been flawless so far.
