I just got my used DI-20 after noticing how nobody with the R8 I have or + can stop talking about how good their DAC's sound now. Nobody selling used DI-20's actually wants to save you any money from a new DI-25, but nonetheless, already with this older DI-20 in front of my DAC, rebuilding my lousy desktop's USB expansion card's digital output (yes, a $35 7-port USB 3.1 card kept my audio from sounding like it came out of the cheapest and noisiest port possible, I don't know if that can save me from eventually having to drop $500 on a dedicated audiophile quiet USB port expansion card) into my choice of premium output flavors, including 2 custom methods that my DAC designer tried to beat SP/DIF with. I tried the standard RCA coax and also the pro AES/EBU digital outputs, but right away, switching back to I2S over HDMI, that one makes the singers seem frail and like there is an actual struggle for humanity going on, and so that convinces me it's the winner of the outputs initially, even though more comparisons will come after >1 week of ownership.
Anyways, first impressions after installing DI-20 in front of the original 2019 R8: A new gigantic soundstage outside of width, (which apparently on my HD800's, will make you all jealous of its size VS anything else), it's all more open and clear, and it also all gets a really nice boost to SLAM from the bass, which I didn't know I wasn't getting before.
2nd impressions, I have to keep on turning the volume up, to subconsciously compensate for it not being all full of noise, and therefore not being able to hear it as plainly. Nope, after the DI-20, I no longer am a headphone listener who says he prefers lower volumes also. Actually, if I crank up my speakers, my cranky mean neighbors will have to hear playback that beats anything they ever hear anywhere else, also. Hmm, no, I'm sticking to headphones first, and reports of nothing beating my HD800's until >$3k (I perfect their awful Grado FR by letting Sonarworks EQ them using mic's) is just making me a happier early-adopter after my HD600 love-life made me have to admit that I still only spent $500, and in all fairness, surely >$100k speaker drivers can still show them up. Yup, non-circumaural leather pads are keeping me from going with the SR 007's instead, apparently these are also lighter with earcups that aren't shy of taking up half of your head each, cushioned by a fabric instead of lambskin, and finally, even the hot-shot $3k Audeze planars with the FR everyone loves only give bass slam instead of being analytical for all your tracks, like the HD800's. So, these remain my kings of headphone presentation-based reference home monitoring.
No, since I realized I've never even spent money on speaker cable before, I'll have to wait until my $200 bi-wire speaker cables arrive in the mail, before being mean to my mean neighbors with a sound system that destroys them. Except that's probably why they're mean, sound systems too easily beat them, lol!
Anyways, in short, impression #2: Crank it up, you can hardly hear anything properly without any noise added to it, anymore! Especially if its a track without any slamming bass to let you know DI-20 has obviously not only increased your sound stages size and open-ness outside of plain wideness, which you may soon also increase the size of by increasing the volume level, as normal per pair of open-backs. Volume levels will now let me hear just as much loudness as before, except it's not due to annoyingly cheap non-dedicated USB port noise. With the right tracks, I get more dynamics, and get the additional opportunity to appreciate the 24 bit maximum of dynamic accuracy for the samples our gear can currently possibly handle playing back, after that, all we can ask for is no more sampling, just pure everchanging audio.
Upgrading the input to my R8 with the DI-20 got rid of lots of silent noise somehow. I have to turn it up more again to hear more loudness, but my dynamics are showing off inside of a gigantic soundstage now, compared to before, so this is actually still just temporary dynamic showing off. The appreciation at higher volume levels for the extra 50% of loudness detail recording is already spoiling my party when a 16 bit track comes back on. Especially if it's a good one, from pre-2022, while only I ever wanted more than CD's original bare minimum of human maximum audibility # of detail samples per second of forging humanity as perfection.
Spending 1/3 of the $ already included inside of my DAC for a device to put in between my audio-awful desktop PC, except for it's big juicy power cable making it more better than by default cable, oh, and it's silent and confident reads from an external USB powered fast buffering-speed SSD, is so simply only playing no more than the complete encirclement of the surrounding musicians, that my volume knob is begging to get turned up, just to get the old loudness levels, meanwhile what that will do for my new dynamics, especially on 24 bit releases, with its 50% boost to degrees of volume precision keeping things quieter than plain limited 16 bit recordings and the equivalent vinyl format allowed for. Tape got higher, so recordings switched to it, but you know you'd never spend $200 for an album on its original type of reel, and the best for the least $ was still vinyl for an extra lower-fi age outside of the studio master tape copy. Now, you can get better dynamic range by digital than your gear can differentiate, as long as you let yourself get fooled into forgetting that reality is everchanging audio, not samples of detail per second. But it's true, 20 year old versions of stuff who's engineers already went for 96khz versions of, still sounds like it at least didn't lose as badly as CD rate, and actually does make me feel better still, even though it's still only double the original samples of detail per second rate. But yeah, these guys have already knowing I'd like to hear him add some slam to their thing going for them.
Seriously, Muse is a three piece outfit, but my WAV versions of them makes it painfully obvious that those poor only those 3 guys are making any sounds at all coming out of my headphones for a change, that my volume knob is just begging to get cranked, to make fun of the old noisiness, outside of my newer 24 bit degrees of relative loudness per sample for output. Whoah, now its like a concert, except my gear is a cover version snapshot of the 3 of them alone in silence-treated studio space, for this very playback in my living room! If only everyone made recording engineers have to make a 2nd binaural version of every recording, for headphone choice's concurrent supremacy of the sweet spot as well.
