My new (old) DAC and what I learned today...
Howdy All,
So I risked pissing my gf off today and made a rather quick decision to purchase my first "outboard" dac from a guy who placed an ad on Craigslist.
Mind you I have been using my PC as my source and using an ASUS STX soundcard (with upgraded opamps) as my dac. I have always known that the source reigns king in the signal chain (that statement ought to spark a nice discussion! :) but, man, I didn't know that a 20 year old dac would blow away my close to top of the line consumer grade sound card.
The DAC I am bragging about is the Audio Alchemy DDE V1.0 DAC which hit the retail market sometime in the very early 90's. Here is a [link](http://hometheaterreview.com/audio-a...-dac-reviewed/) to a review if you are interested.
Wow. Just Wow. Whodathunkit that a 20 year old DAC would best a $200 top-of-the-heap mass marketed card in 2010?
The bass sounds fuller and tighter at the same time, the decay is more natural and unhurried- especially on the high notes (the high hat in Steely Dan's Do It Again, for instance, sound so much more real and less digitall), the instruments are better separated, the sound stage has more bredth and (more impressively) depth, I could go on and on.
I got this puppy for $75 and a couple gallons of gas. Guys, if you come across one of these for the same price and you can squeeze one into your rigs where it makes sense DO IT!
Happy New Year,
J
PC---Audio Alchemy DAC---YS Symphonies Plus Tube Pre---NAD 2400THX Amp--- Allison Four Large Bookshelf Speakers with modded Tweets--Using All homemade silver interconnect cables