A Tale of Two DACs | Stereophile.com

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Submitted By: Stephen Scharf

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Joined: Nov 19 2008

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A Tale of Two DACs

Posted: April 30, 2012 - 11:09pm

Hey Gang at Stereophile,

Just a recommendation about two DACs that you should seriously be considering reviewing:

The first is the Schiit Bifrost, which is making quite a name for itself amongst many satisfied owners. I just sold mine to a buddy with arrival of a new DAC, but I was very, very impressed with this product over the time I owned it. I know that there is a policy for "at least five retailers" to be considered for review, and that Schiit sells direct to customers, but Mike Moffat and Jason Stoddard are "movers" in this industry and have already made quite a name for themselves with their headphone amps. And I know that from time to time you review direct-sales companies like Zu and NHT, so I strongly recommend you check out their Bifrost DAC. IMHO, it slaughters everything in the $500 price class, and gives DACs in the $1000-$1200 a serious run for their money. If you can review Bob's Devices Step-Up Transformers, you can review the Bifrost.

The second DAC is the new Wadia 121. This new DAC has just hit the market and is already causing waves for perforrmance way beyond it's $1299 price tag. I've had mine now for about three weeks, and it is very impressive (it's the DAC that replaced my Bifrost). It's feature rich with five inputs and both balanced and unbalanced outputs PLUS a headphone amp. Joe Bob says check it out....

Cheers,
Stephen Scharf

Submitted By: JIMV

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Joined: Jan 31 2008

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I have also heard rave

Posted: May 1, 2012 - 2:04pm

I have also heard rave reviews for these but have never seen one..

Submitted By: Dr Morbius

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Location: Liverpool, UK

Joined: May 2 2012

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At the other end of the

Posted: May 2, 2012 - 10:30am

At the other end of the scale, I recently bought a Tubemagic D2 from maverick audio, I can't believe how good this is for the money, got to audition a cambridge audio dacmagic before this but wasn't that impressed with it so I took a chance with the D2 and I'm so glad I took that chance. It's got plenty of inputs, optical, S/P DIF, USB and BNC/coaxial, all support 24bit/96khz and two out puts a solid state and a tube pre-amp out .

First of all I was using the solid state which had a nice crisp sound and quite punchy mainly cause I wasn't overly impressed with the tube out,after about a month or so I decided to give the tube another go and now that's all I'm using, the sound stage seemed wider and deeper and more natural than I recalled and it just seemed more natural and non fatiguing.

You should definitely consider reviewing the tubemagic d2 as I found it hard to find a review of it and it has made a massive improvement to my entry level set up.

Cheers.