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A worthy upgrade from the Duet?

post #1 of 11
2/22/10 at 5:20am
Thread Starter 
Greetings All,

I am in that typical situation where I am considering what I should next upgrade in my system and have begun rooting out the 'weakest link'. Trouble is, I am (for the time being) happy with my headphones and with with my amp. So I have started eyeballing different DACs. In particular, I really like the look of the Meier stagedac - it tempts me with it's advanced cross feed system and all-round flexibility.

So, considering I am currently using an apogee duet (and would continue to use it for recording purposes) - Do you think that a DAC circa £500/$800, like the stagedac, would really offer me a significant return SQ-wise? I realize it is difficult to quantify 'significant', so feel free to let fly with unsubstantiated opinon If you have any other suggestions at what might constitute a genuine upgrade, or if you feel I would be wasting my money, by all means say.

Please bear in mind that I have had my Duet longer than I have been into head-fi, and my only real experience before that was with cheaper tascam/m-audio interfaces.

All opinion welcome.

Cheers in advance.
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post #2 of 11
2/22/10 at 7:54pm
I haven't heard the Stagedac, but I upgraded from the Duet to the Lavry DA11 about a year ago and I'm happy I did. I had the Lavry on a 30 day trial so was really able to compare the two before making my decision. The Lavry has a bigger, more airy soundstage, more detail, the congested highs that I noticed in the Duet are gone, and the Lavry just sounds more musical. The Duet is a great DAC for the money, and the law of diminishing returns will apply no matter which gear you upgrade to, but for me there was no going back to the Duet after spending time with the Lavry.
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post #3 of 11
2/24/10 at 12:48am
The Duet is a nice piece, no doubt. I think you should look into something like the Audio-gd DAC19-DSP. It uses the best off the shelf DAC chips you can get, the PCM1704U-K. Typically these are only found in DACs costing thousands of dollars.
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post #4 of 11
2/24/10 at 1:53am
I thought the CIAudio VDA-2 was a worthy upgrade from my HeadAmp Pico DAC. I feel the same way about it in relation to the Duet as well.
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post #5 of 11
2/24/10 at 1:58am
here's a vote for a 'full' gamma2 dac. its also considered pretty high end (for the size and price, at least).

its worth a try before you spend on 'really expensive' stuff (lol). i'm pretty happy with mine and have no need to spend $1k and up for a dac when there's this little guy doing a hell of a job.

good spdif receiver, reclocker and top of the line wolfson dac chip. for a few hundred dollars, tops.

(I have a duet and also recently bought a 'dented box' (lol) sb3 classic. I like the sb3 better, its less buggy, in operation, than that damned duet!)
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post #6 of 11
2/24/10 at 2:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxworks View Post
(I have a duet and also recently bought a 'dented box' (lol) sb3 classic. I like the sb3 better, its less buggy, in operation, than that damned duet!)
That's not the Duet he's talking about. He's talking about the Apogee Duet. (notice he mentioned he uses it for recording, and specified the Apogee Duet in his post, as well as his signature)
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post #7 of 11
2/24/10 at 2:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by IPodPJ View Post
That's not the Duet he's talking about. He's talking about the Apogee Duet. (notice he mentioned he uses it for recording, and specified the Apogee Duet in his post, as well as his signature)
haha oops. my bad. (but the logitech duet IS a source device, so it was not clear to me)

lesson: product name collisions can be hazardous to posting
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post #8 of 11
2/24/10 at 2:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxworks View Post
but the logitech duet IS a source device, so it was not clear to me
Understandable. I owned one, too. Nice for a transport, not so great for analog outs.
But he did say Apogee Duet.
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post #9 of 11
2/24/10 at 2:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by IPodPJ View Post
But he did say Apogee Duet.
well, THAT explains it. I have a firefox plugin that swaps the word 'apogee' for 'logitech'. its an odd little plugin, but it sometimes does other useful things.


(yes, I'm kidding. it actually swaps more words than that).

lol
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post #10 of 11
2/24/10 at 3:14am
But if you had that plug-in you would have never seen me type the word Apogee. Or did I really type Logitech and now it's switching the two? I guess you'll never know.
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post #11 of 11
2/24/10 at 8:22am
Thread Starter 
Cheers for all your suggestions folks. I shall look into the DACs mentioned.
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