As you probably know, the EC Designs Mosaic UV is supposed to be a pretty big step up from the T DAC, at least according to that small group of listeners that have actually heard it, but it doesn't seem to really be available for most people to purchase yet. Many interesting ideas coming from the Brown brothers...
The products of the Brown brothers are indeed really interesting and relatively cheap given the extensive R&D involved and unique approach to digital audio. I have heard mixed reactions regarding the Mosaic UV DAC but have not yet been able to listen for myself. It is also quite a bit cheaper than the Mosaic T DAC. I think that the DAC reviews/quest of Christiaan Punter are mostly spot on and very interesting. He was supposed to review the Mosaic UV as well but I did not yet see the review on his website. For me first on the list is to really test the Mosaic preamp on the AN Paladin and take it from there.
as ive said earlier in this thread, I also have the EC designs Mosaic T. I had the schiit ygddrassil, and imo the Mosaic T was in another league musically, naturalness, soundstage. EC design mosaic T have been reviewed by hifiadvice. the reviewer replaced the Jeff rowland 13k aeris dac with the Mosaic T. He later compared the Mosaic T with the Metrum Pavane and ended up preffering the Mosaic T for its musicality. I see OP is about to get the Metrum onyx, a lesser dac then the Metrum flagship the Pavane. The Mosaic T was preferred over the Pavane and the new Mosaic UV is suposedly better then the Mosaic T... I understand that EC design is a smaller company, but I seriouslly recommend to ask them for a audition. While less known of a company Ec desings is, they are veteran at DIYaudio. Their 1541 thread over there which is span over 13 years of development should give a idea to anyone how deep their knowledge about DAC are and you can follow the development from tda1541 to tda1543 in parallel, to using one chip to doping the TDA15xx chips all together and design their own R2R dac chip. The mosaic T is the result of years of dac development that anyone can follow at diyaudio Building the ultimate NOS DAC using TDA1541A - diyAudio Their new Mosaic UV is supposedly even better. They used to allow home audition. For the money, they ask, its a no brainer
Did you also notice a difference in drive between the Yggy and Mosaic T dac? Christiaan Punter noticed it as well in his review and replaced the Mosaic T dac in the end.
The TEAC plays DSD files, so the reason for spending more on a DAC is not file format but will the sound be more satisfying by going with the higher end DACs; Venus or Onyx? My hesitation is in the belief that the additional money for those plus $2K units is more attention spent on the internal components and in particular the power supplies which will give them the advantage in terms of playback magic. Due to not having a hifi house to visit to audition them I am frustrated and unfortunately I need to soul search and determine if I would feel content settling for saving some money since I do enjoy the sound of the TEAC or jumping in the deep end and purchasing one of the more expensive units due to the belief that the additional money will payoff and provide better sound. Maybe someone can answer this question, is the capabilty to play DSD files critical if I do not plan on buying downloaded files and only will be playing my redbook CDs, Flak files burnt from them and streaming from various subscription music internet services such as Tidal? At this point the answer to this question is critical and since I have never used internet services I do not know if having the ability to playback DSD is critical to this format or not.
I can recommend Paladin. I own a Paladin silver signature with Spx HE speakers and it sounds amazing I changed to Paladin from Oto sig and it's quite a different ball game.
I ended up with a totally different DAC and was able to save a bunch of money and still ended up very happy with a wonderful sounding unit that offered tons of features. The DAC I ended up with was the TEAC Network DAC - NT-505, which incorporates MQA, Tidal and Qobuz. Roon will be a firmware update in the near future. Main functions Hi-Res audio playback supporting DSD512 (22.6MHz) and PCM 768kHz/32-bit PCM Dual monaural circuit design with a high-end AKM VERITA AK4497 DAC on each channel Supports MQA decoder and music subscription services (TIDAL and Qobuz) and is Roon-ready DSD128 (5.6MHz) and PCM 192kHz/24-bit Network streaming from NAS/PC 5 types of PCM digital filters and 2 types of DSD digital filters Up-conversion up to 24.5MHz DSD and 384kHz/32-bit PCM Dual on-board clocks for 44.1kHz and 48kHz frequencies, and 10MHz external clock input Bluetooth® receiver supporting LDAC™ and Qualcomm® aptX™ HD TEAC-HCLD output buffer circuit and TEAC-QVCS volume control for high quality sound I decided as nice as the Chinese imports are suppose to be, Holo and Denafrips, I like the idea I have a local shop who will stand behind the DAC I purchase and will work with me in case of any issues. I also like to support local HiFi businesses when I can. In addition as mentioned I was able to save a lot of money that then went to upgrading one of my cables and the purchase of two others that I required to integrate the DAC into my system. Thanks to everyone for their wonderful suggestions, they were very helpful.
About 14m2 +open concept kitchen. I’m usually listening plus 80db volume from sweetspot without any problems. And I could push it more. Bass is strong with good control
My living room is 32m2 with additional lage open plan towards the kitchen. So I will need to check whether the Paladin will work. My dealer is able to loan me a Paladin so this fall I will test it.
Thanks, yes a TEAC, I believe that is what I said and I am enjoying. Just updated the firmware so it now has MQA, which I am not sure I really care one way or the other about, but it will be nice to have it available, so I can experiment. It also now supports Tidal which I am excited about and am looking forward to using. Next step is connecting into my network to access my PC. My music room is on a different floor from my PC and network server. Just had a cat line brought into the room. I am thinking it may make more sense to connect using a cat 8 line as opposed to a USB line. Taking baby steps while the DAC burns in.
I believe that being R2R and handling DSD files are mutually exclusive features. The only way to handle DSD files on an R2R DAC is to first convert them to PCM.
I believe that is true. The Holo DAC is an R2R ladder DAC that handles both PCM & DSD however I believe the files are converted. Not sure about the exact process. I started my search for an R2R ladder DAC but ended up with the TEAC which is not and it does handle both DSD and PCM files. It will also convert PCM file to DSD if I choose to. At this time with little play time on the DAC I have not played with up converting or filters much except for some very quick switching just to see how to do both filtering and up converting. With my quick experiment it seemed that the filtering is not worth the effort, what I heard did not seem like a positive change. I did noticed the most difference with up converting PCM to DSD but cannot say if it was an improvement or not, I did not listen too long or too closely.
DSD can be converted straight to analog through a low pass filter without transcribing it to PCM first. @Black Elk has mentioned this before. More from PSAudio mentioning this process.
I have a couple friends that have the Holo Springs DAC level 3, and they use the Holo in combination HQ Player via Roon. Both of these systems have sublime sounding digital playback.
This is true. But I'm not sure what this comment is has to do with R2R DACs (the only kind which I was describing, and which is just another name for Multibit DAC). Because Multibit DACs most definitely cannot do this without converting the signal to PCM first. FYI - Most modern Delta-Sigma DACs will decode both PCM and DSD, and these do not use either PS-Audio's decoding method or a multibit DAC's decoding method.
Maybe our confusion comes in R2R ladder vs R2R chip. You seem to be only speaking to R2R chips which would only do PCM. I think of the term DAC as the actual box, not just a chip. An actual analog resistor (R2R) configuration could easily include an analog low pass filter to do DSD, which is probably what HOLO is doing. If your definition of R2R DACs only includes DACs using R2R chips you will be missing a few DACs from your sample.
This is definitely true of Toslink. And this is definitely true of all stock SACD players. Although there is one exception to no-coaxial transmission restriction which may be had output by modifying an Oppo 103 or 203 with the addition of a Vanity HD board. Yes. But only one or two discrete DACs feature true HDMI inputs due to how much it costs to license HDMI. However this feature is super common in AV receivers, which are all made by manufacturers which are big enough to afford to pay HDMI's licensing costs. Although PS audio has a clever way around all of these restrictions by sending I2S signals (which just happen to use HDMI cables as their transport mechanism) to send DSD (as well as PCM) signals from their transports to their DACs.
I'm not certain if this is what you are suggesting here, but it would be incredibly stupid to try re-arrange an entire DAC's architecture so that you could re-use a single resistor out of your entire R2R resistor network to decode your DSD signal. If they do anything close to what you are suggesting, then they would be simply bypassing their entire R2R ladder DAC to send the DSD signal to a separate (single) resistor (per channel) followed by the low pass filter. So it still would not be decoded by the R2R DAC itself, but it would instead be decoded by a circuit which bypasses the entire R2R network and which happens to sit inside of the same box.
I’m pretty bewitched by the humble Metrum Flint I bought for my bedroom system to see how I would get along with the NOS sound. It’s confusing to me in some ways. I find the Flint less conspicuously detailed than the Schiit multibit dacs I own, but I notice I’m listening for hours without the desire to switch to vinyl—something that didn’t happen when I was using the Modi Multibit. Seriously thinking about the Onyx or another NOS dac for my office system.
I just replaced my Schiit DAC with a Flint as well and I'm having the same experience. Music is more enjoyable with the Flint but not as detailed - I think I may have been confusing detail with exaggerated treble. Have you upgraded to the Onyx? If so how do you like that?
What is your amp and speakers? I've don't consider the Schiit multibits to have exaggerated treble or false (faux) detail. The impression that the DACs have exaggerated treble could be the result of some sort of synergy mismatch with some gear or sound style. Good synergy can sometimes be hard to find.
