Just yesterday I met up with a friend to pass him some excess cables that I have but no longer use.
Saw a small black box on his desktop and got quite excited cos I recognized it as the irDAC which I've always been interested in trying out.
I'm not sure exactly how old his unit was but I do believe it was only a couple of weeks since he bought it and with not much playing time since he's been really busy recently.
I tried it with my Portaphile 627X, which I've used quite a bit for both portable and desktop listening, and the sound was quite something.
It didn't take me more than half a minute to recognize that this was the best DAC I've heard so far (maybe the Gungnir as well but that was ages ago so I can't remember how it stacks up).
It helped that he has several tracks on his PC that are my favs so I'm pretty sure of what I was hearing. One caveat though was that he was powering it with an LPS so I've no idea how much it contributed to the sound.
On to specifics, it's a really lush sounding DAC. Soundstage is perhaps not the widest, but the depth and layering is excellent. The overall presentation is quite aggressive and upfront, but I do believe the bass and treble are very slightly rolled-off in a way which makes listening non-fatiguing at all. The level of detail, clarity and transparency is certainly very impressive, particularly because it is a rather warm sounding amp, and most of the warm-ish amps in my experience aren't the best in those regards.
Not sure how I'd fair in a blind test with other DACs but I'm quite confident I'd be able to identify the irDAC consistently.
Comparing to the next best DAC which sound I can remember, the Uberfrost (which coincidentally also belonged to the same friend), the irDAC was slightly better in every regard I can think of.
I think I've just found a reason to visit him one more time. Not sure what's the optimal burn in time of the unit, but I'm more than curious to hear how much better it can sound, if at all.
For $799 USD it'd definitely be good value. I see some used units online floating at the $400-500 range and that to me is tremendous value. I could only wish I would be able to afford it, but alas age and health make it not the case. Perhaps in the future when I can reinvest more in this hobby.
Oh yes and I forgot to mention it input was USB. Not sure what cable he was using but it wasn't stock.