Thanks for the kind words everyone! Hopefully people find the project useful, even if they were just interested in one of the other DACs I mentioned. Some great options in there - I could happily live with the Merason, Rockna, Meitner, or particularly the Wavelength. Others like the Esoteric and Atoll were quite good as well.
Not sure if I made it clear but there were plenty of others that I disliked so much as to not even bother including at all. The whole process involved over 30 DACs, and the ones that didn't make the cut were pretty bad. Even the models I didn't love for one reason or another (such as the Lab12, Aavik, and Audio Research) were much, much better than the ones I did not include. Some rather big brands and popular models in there too...
I don't think it's fair to drop names and not explain why I disliked them. So I'll just leave it alone.
Thank you for this! Wow it must a great but fun task to be able to compare lots of high end DACs. I myself considered DSDAC deluxe edition as an upgrade, but I ended up with Lumin P1, as I want a more simple setup with one box streamer/dac and the P1 has fiber optic input which in my opinion really makes a difference. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoy reading your journey and enjoy this marvelous DAC!
As I mentioned somewhere in my writeup, Lumin definitely knows what they are doing. I'm sure that P1 is a beast. And there's a lot to be said for getting the streamer, DAC, and preamp all in one box. Hope you enjoy it for a long time!
I'm wondering if users of the Deluxe model find USB to be the best input- or not necessairly?
It is often hard to do a "input comparison" because often it is the difference in the cables that make the sound different.... rather than the input itself...
I personally feel the inputs are all pretty much equal. Or at least close enough to where I would use any of them without feeling like I was missing out.
For me the decision would come down to my transport and what sounds best or works best from that end. Like some transports only have USB, so that's obvious. But some have a bunch of options yet maybe AES or BNC sounds best - in those cases I'd happily use that format, knowing the Cen.Grand wasn't really picky either way.
The only other issue is playback compatibility if your library has lots of DSD128 and above, or PCM higher than 192khz. Which frankly is very very unlikely. But if that's the case you'll want to go with USB since (as usual) it goes way higher than the others.