I have only tried entry level r2r DACs so I can't really comment on this from personal experience, but I remembered Rob Watt's comment in another thread that might be relevant. (I preferred Mojo as a DAC vs. Modi multibit.)Its not about price. Its implementation. At the end of the day, even a 10,000 pound, euro, or dollar whatever delta sigma dac is still a delta sigma dac. The platform just cannot compete with proper r2r for organic natural sound, and that’s especially true when price matching. Spend the same money on a good r2r as you did on the qutest and enter a whole new world.
"Having emphasised the problems with delta-sigma or noise shaping you may think its better to use R2R DAC's instead. But they too have considerable timing errors too; making the timing of signals code independent is impossible. Also they have considerable low level non linearity problems too as its impossible to match the resistor values - much worse than DSD even - so again we are stuck with poor depth, perception of timing and timbre. Not only that they suffer from substantial noise floor modulation, giving a forced hard aggressive edge to them. Some listeners prefer that, and I won't argue with somebody else's taste - whatever works for you. But its not real and it not the sound I hear with live un-amplified instruments."
I am not a Chord advocate, so I stop here, especially for this is going very off topic. I am just impressed by Chord sound and wanted to spread some joy.
Rob might be right and it comes down to a preferred type of sound with the r2r DACs. I am curious though to try some higher-end r2r DAC now.
The nature of hype is that it subsides after a while. Chord is on an incredible rise for quite a good number of years now and there don't seem to be an end of it.I disagree completely, Betula. But i'm used to hearing things like this from Chord fans. I also fell into the hype.
Sorry, back to the LCD2C.