Ok. I read through all 63 pages. It is interesting that 90% of the posts are in regard to DDC's and streamers and issues with the internal network connection. And very few posts talking about direct sonic comparisons with other DAC's. And if they were compared, it was with things that cost twice as much (stratospheric in my book). I admit that when contemplating whether to try this DAC, these types of high dollar comparisons made me think that this must be a very seriously good sounding piece of equipment in order to have it considered in such expensive and dialed in systems.
My signal chain at the moment is laptop> Foobar or Qobuz ASIO> USB (Excalibur/ Viborg/ various ebay/ Hosa/ Starteck/ etc.)> DAC> XLR or RCA DIY interconnects of Nordost Silver plated-air insulated cable, (or boxes full of other interconnects from Audio Quest to ebay that I will never care about again now that I am using the Nordost.)> VMV P2 amp> 4 pin solid Silver headphone cable> HiFiMan HE1000SE. The 3 DACs I have to compare are the Gustard A26, Burson Conductor Reference SE with Sparkos Pro opamps fitted, and VMV D2R.
iiwi has the caption on the place holder image for their review of the A26 labeled with the text "This DAC is driving me crazy". I have been feeling a bit crazy myself. I have had the Burson for 4 months and it has served me well. The nice folks at the SMSL CanJam NYC table wouldn't let me walk out empty handed at the end of the day and were dreading lugging all their stuff on the airplane back to China, so I ended up with a good deal on the VMV stack. I wanted another amp as a review tool anyway.
The audiophile grass is always greener up to a price point so I decided to go up one more tier to try the A26.
I test equipment by ear with audiophile recordings. But listen for pleasure to more progressive rock and metal. Now that I have 10.5 million tracks a click away. and many of those are remastered to HiRes, I'm finding that some of the pre digital rock albums were recorded quite well. Early Heart, Jethro Tull, Steely Dan, they finally got the miking for the drums dialed in on Rush Moving Pictures with beautiful reverb decay on the vocals of "Camera Eye".
The Burson took on a big improvement with the Sparkos Pro opamps and is very similar to the VMV in the black soundstage, transparency, snap. But this SE version is single ended from front to back so has that as a disadvantage relative to the other 2 DACs which can run balanced cables. Although I did try them all with RCAs and the differences between them still had the same qualities. The Burson is also USB Type C so is relegated to using a different cable. And the excellent Supra Excalibur is not offered with a Type C. So I am still using an excellent sounding Type A to C ebay cable with the Burson, which is better than the Pro Audio type Hosa for example, so allows me to say it sounds good enough to use, but is still another unknown.The VMV has the slight edge in fine detail retrieval and reverb over the Burson so I can focus the comparison with the A26 on that even as both of these other DACs have excellent speed, snap, and an open, black soundstage. The XLR sounds slightly better.
Being a "cable person" for 30 years, I was very surprised at the difference in sound between USB cables. Bits are bits, right? Wrong! If you can't hear the difference between Cables, DACs, fill in the blank, count yourself lucky. Your audio life is much simpler.
So I can turn the comparison to the VMV D2R versus the Gustard A26 with the identical signal chain. When you get into these nearly state of the art performance levels, the choice almost comes down to flavors, rather than clearly better or worse. Hence the A26 vs R26 choice for instance or me going crazy swapping cables back and forth between these three DACs. On certain noisy live rock arena tracks, I was actually connecting the Burson in favor of the VMV for its cutting clarity. On better recordings the Gustard A26 Is more fleshed out and organic than the VMV, making the D2R sound slightly cardboard in comparison, with each instrument image perceived as bigger with less space in between on the Gustard. iiwi would probably say something like "juicier and more palpable". The VMV has smaller images, although the stage width and height are about the same. Which leaves more room between the precise placement of the instruments for more blackness in between on the canvas. With a fairly major difference that the central images, the vocals, are set slightly farther back into the black stage on the D2R. Which is the one nitpick I have with the A26. Some recordings still separate the vocals in depth from other central images like an acoustic guitar, ie Heart "Nada One" or "Mistral Wind", while on other recordings, "Babylon Sisters", Skating Away" or "Camera Eye", the vocals on the A26 are closer, fatter, and juicier than the VMV, but less separate and less surrounded by a black space compared to the D2R. Which starts to make them slightly more congested and harder to pick out on dirty, main stream recordings. The A26 does have the last word on fine detail of reverb decay and is slightly more resolving and coherent out to the far edges of the stage so will be my keeper, but makes me wonder if the very full sound of the Excalibur cable might be a bit too much of a good thing in pairing with this DAC. The Gustard has deeper bass, making the other DACs sound cool. The Viborg USB cable can't match the organic, natural sound of the the Supra though, sounding more cardboard even if it is slightly snappier and brighter. So the Excalibur is my choice for now. As is the A26.
And I am really trying to avoid the added expense and complexity of a DDC to I2S, and am definitely not looking forward to building a whole new network mesh for a streamer and overpriced subscription player. I would however consider a more cost effective, but still high end, USB card to the high dollar JCAT ($400 seems like it should be plenty for a card) since I need to build a more powerful PC in order to start upsampling with PGGB. If there was one.
And as a mad modifier with a soldering iron, I wonder what the Gustards might sound like with the op amps in the I/V stage replaced with the amazing black and deep Sparkos 2590 Pros. And with foil caps bypassing any possible signal coupling caps? in the output stages. Could there be a link to a schematic?
