Originally Posted by HighLife
Never hearing the Zero, i can say the Zhaolu is a good dac for the money. Upgrades are nice and will indeed improved sound quite a bit.
Im going between a Zhaolu 2.5A (upgrades in my sig) and a Lavry DA10. When you really sit down and listen to it, the modded Zhaolu isnt to far from the DA10 when it comes to detail. The Lavry is sharp, detailed, sometimes to sharp. The Zhaolu is smooth, with alittle less detail. For certain music i can see why one would prefer zhaolu over the Lavry, however in music like classical, the lavry shines cause of the detail.
For example...
I like the Zhaolu for any type of HEAVY guitar distort music, like Smashing Pumpkins.
I liked the Lavry more for light guitar (like Frampton or Clapton) and classical music (pretty much any).
I liked the Zhaolu more for Live recordings, cept if it fell into my second sentence.
I liked the Zhaolu more for pretty much ALL my Marley collection...the Lavry brought out a sharpness to Bob's back vocalists i never heard before. It almost had a tizz sound to it. The detail was nicer, but overall was too sharp for my ears.
Nice comparison.
I think I'm going to go with the Zero though. I got a price quote for the D2.5a, and it comes to $215. I can get the Zero for $150. The extra money can be put towards a transport as I'd be using the digital out on my motherboard otherwise, and we all know how awful onboard motherboard sound is.