[LeonidK]

Has anyone of you ever did a blind comparison of R26 and any other dacs? With RME ADI-2 on my nearfield setup I've always had that feeling of instruments being congested and put on completely flat soundstage with not really natural timbre whatsoever. When I plugged in R26 I never even listened to ADI-2 again because I had had the RME for a couple of months before and I knew what it sounded like, R26 immediately solved all of the issues I had with RME and I've been 100% satisfied with R26 since I got it, never again did I have a need to change my dac. Now everything always sound exactly how I wanted it too, never feeling uncomfortable as I did with RME.
That being said...
I once brought it to my friend's who has RME in his home stereo, and despite of matching the levels only by ear I was mostly not able to discern these dacs. In one case of a good orchestral recording I was sure that R26 was playing because of its more precise imaging, but other than that I guessed wrong, even though I knew the traits of both dacs very well. I have to note that I'm not very much familiar with his setup's sound and I never liked it. Nevertheless it made me wonder if dacs really make a difference or it's just bias...

 

[rawhit]

@rawhit Reach out to the seller...for replacement or refund.

I've contacted the seller. Bought a pre-owned unit on usaaudiomart and they had never used the LAN input so could have been defective to begin with.

 

[rawhit]

Here ya go. Good luck.

Thanks. No luck with Balena etcher so far. Will wait to hear back from seller before I try the SD card replacement route.

When I first tried to install new firmware the r26 did not like the combo usbc/lightning port on my pc I had to use usb a port on my pc to install the firmware.

Did use the USB-c to USB-A cable but same issue.

 

[ohcrapgorillas]

Has anyone of you ever did a blind comparison of R26 and any other dacs? With RME ADI-2 on my nearfield setup I've always had that feeling of instruments being congested and put on completely flat soundstage with not really natural timbre whatsoever. When I plugged in R26 I never even listened to ADI-2 again because I had had the RME for a couple of months before and I knew what it sounded like, R26 immediately solved all of the issues I had with RME and I've been 100% satisfied with R26 since I got it, never again did I have a need to change my dac. Now everything always sound exactly how I wanted it too, never feeling uncomfortable as I did with RME.
That being said...
I once brought it to my friend's who has RME in his home stereo, and despite of matching the levels only by ear I was mostly not able to discern these dacs. In one case of a good orchestral recording I was sure that R26 was playing because of its more precise imaging, but other than that I guessed wrong, even though I knew the traits of both dacs very well. I have to note that I'm not very much familiar with his setup's sound and I never liked it. Nevertheless it made me wonder if dacs really make a difference or it's just bias...

Blind testing is difficult with your own system and nearly impossible with others'. I think that to detect changes like that, you must be intimately familiar with the sound of the system and the material. I also failed a blind test once on someone else's system between an ODAC and a Bifrost Multibit, which should have been no competition, but it wasn't my system nor my music.

My only other experience with blind testing is with the R26's internal/external clock on my own home system. I use an Aune XC1 external clock, which does improve the sound when powered with a linear power supply, but degraded sound when powered by the stock SMPS. I close my eyes, spin the wheel on the clock setting, and guess which clock is in use. I failed reliably with the first few tests, but once I locked onto the differences, I had a 100% success rate. For example, with the Aune XC1 powered by the stock SMPS, I heard a slightly flatter soundstage and some stridency in female vocals in a certain song; the internal clock maintained the soundstage better and had no stridency. With the clock powered by a LPS, the internal clock sounds a bit smoothed over when it comes to super-fine textural details, where the external clock has better texture and reveals things like leading edges/decay more easily with slightly better separation.

Granted, I am using my R26 for headphones which are likely to be more sensitive and revealing of small changes which may otherwise be swallowed by the room with speakers.

 

[Loftprojection]

Has anyone of you ever did a blind comparison of R26 and any other dacs? With RME ADI-2 on my nearfield setup I've always had that feeling of instruments being congested and put on completely flat soundstage with not really natural timbre whatsoever. When I plugged in R26 I never even listened to ADI-2 again because I had had the RME for a couple of months before and I knew what it sounded like, R26 immediately solved all of the issues I had with RME and I've been 100% satisfied with R26 since I got it, never again did I have a need to change my dac. Now everything always sound exactly how I wanted it too, never feeling uncomfortable as I did with RME.
That being said...
I once brought it to my friend's who has RME in his home stereo, and despite of matching the levels only by ear I was mostly not able to discern these dacs. In one case of a good orchestral recording I was sure that R26 was playing because of its more precise imaging, but other than that I guessed wrong, even though I knew the traits of both dacs very well. I have to note that I'm not very much familiar with his setup's sound and I never liked it. Nevertheless it made me wonder if dacs really make a difference or it's just bias...

Sound is always dependent on the worst piece of equipment in the chain. It may well be that your friend's setup has a very weak point in the chain after the DAC so you end up with both DAC sounding almost the same, keep in mind amps and speakers play a huge role in the end result sound signature. Myself when I check out new stuff, it sometimes sounds very similar on my portable and IEM setup but when using my Meze high end cans suddenly huge differences appear! Just an opinion to consider, I'm no expert in testing.

 

[LeonidK]

Sound is always dependent on the worst piece of equipment in the chain. It may well be that your friend's setup has a very weak point in the chain after the DAC so you end up with both DAC sounding almost the same, keep in mind amps and speakers play a huge role in the end result sound signature. Myself when I check out new stuff, it sometimes sounds very similar on my portable and IEM setup but when using my Meze high end cans suddenly huge differences appear! Just an opinion to consider, I'm no expert in testing.

I don't think that was the case, the amp was Ayon Spirit III and the speakers Audio Physic Classic 20, both solid contenders. Very expensive cables on top of that.

Blind testing is difficult with your own system and nearly impossible with others'. I think that to detect changes like that, you must be intimately familiar with the sound of the system and the material. I also failed a blind test once on someone else's system between an ODAC and a Bifrost Multibit, which should have been no competition, but it wasn't my system nor my music.

Granted, I am using my R26 for headphones which are likely to be more sensitive and revealing of small changes which may otherwise be swallowed by the room with speakers.

1. That's a valid point, but I think most of us have only a couple of test pieces we can recall very well and detect if that note that was there setup A also appears on setup B. We usually choose songs we had heard thousands of times and know every note and detail of them, but honestly, we treat them completely technical in this scenario, not like music. Who analyzes music like that in every day usage? If we compare DACs on those few pieces, it might seem like the difference is night and day and we are ready to spontaneously dump serious cash on it, but realistically, if we move on to our vast libraries, no one is able to memorize all of the details and spatial effects in every recording, so these nuances become even less relevant when we don't have another device to compare A/B. Not trying to say dacs don't matter, just my thoughts. I realized that the moment you start actually listening to MUSIC, gear stops being an obstacle (as long as it is at least decently put together).

2. I have completely different experience, I hear many more details on the speakers (I use quite revealing KEF LS50 Meta) like imaging, soundstage depth and width, bass texture, timbre. On headphones DACs are almost completely irrelevant to me, I can hear close to zero differences.

 

[dacwizard]

I do struggle with ‘blind’ tests in so far as you end up just listening to see the difference of one or two tiny details. Even with speakers how they sound in a showroom is likely completely different to your own room.

i started my DAC journey under a year ago with a cheap SMSL su1 bought as a proof of concept along with a WiiM mini And Qobuz subscription. It sounded good, but I found I just didn’t really enjoy listening to it and tended to turn off after 1/2 hr or so, it wasn’t too bright particularly it was just a bit flat and not engaging compared to my vinyl and CD sources.

I then bought an R26 and X26pro (for various reasons), swapping between them every 30 seconds I’d be hard pressed to tell them apart, but again with prolonged listening the differences become obvious, and it’s the R26 that just makes you want t listen and listen and listen. It’s not perfect and my CD and vinyl sources better it in some respects, but the R26 also bests them in some areas. 9 months later I’m still delighted with it.

 

[LeonidK]

I do struggle with ‘blind’ tests in so far as you end up just listening to see the difference of one or two tiny details. Even with speakers how they sound in a showroom is likely completely different to your own room.

i started my DAC journey under a year ago with a cheap SMSL su1 bought as a proof of concept along with a WiiM mini And Qobuz subscription. It sounded good, but I found I just didn’t really enjoy listening to it and tended to turn off after 1/2 hr or so, it wasn’t too bright particularly it was just a bit flat and not engaging compared to my vinyl and CD sources.

I then bought an R26 and X26pro (for various reasons), swapping between them every 30 seconds I’d be hard pressed to tell them apart, but again with prolonged listening the differences become obvious, and it’s the R26 that just makes you want t listen and listen and listen. It’s not perfect and my CD and vinyl sources better it in some respects, but the R26 also bests them in some areas. 9 months later I’m still delighted with it.

That's similar to my own experience, I have struggled to find peace with RME for months, while I've been satisfied ever since I got R26. That is difficult to explain since in A/B comparison the differences weren't very noticeable, at least on my friend's rig.

 

[rawhit]

Thanks. No luck with Balena etcher so far. Will wait to hear back from seller before I try the SD card replacement route.

Did use the USB-c to USB-A cable but same issue.

Thanks. No luck with Balena etcher so far. Will wait to hear back from seller before I try the SD card replacement route.

Did use the USB-c to USB-A cable but same issue.

Thanks. No luck with Balena etcher so far. Will wait to hear back from seller before I try the SD card replacement route.

Did use the USB-c to USB-A cable but same issue.

Just wanted to update this thread. In my case, the issue turned out to be corrupt micro-sd card which was preventing streamer from booting up.

I used a new micro SD card preloaded with firmware 1.43 (via Balena etcher) and replaced in the DAC. Streamer works now (and sounds pretty darn good)

Thanks @Jake2 @jsiets4 for helping!

 

[BShaw]

Glad to hear you solved the problem rawhit, not the first time a bad card has been the culprit.

 

[Jake2]

Just wanted to update this thread. In my case, the issue turned out to be corrupt micro-sd card which was preventing streamer from booting up.

I used a new micro SD card preloaded with firmware 1.43 (via Balena etcher) and replaced in the DAC. Streamer works now (and sounds pretty darn good)

Thanks @Jake2 @jsiets4 for helping!

Awesome - great result!

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

Just wanted to update this thread. In my case, the issue turned out to be corrupt micro-sd card which was preventing streamer from booting up.

Great news indeed!

 

[Stellabagpuss]

Great result... l had exactly the same issue with my R26. The network side refused to work, put a SD card on with V1.42 ... all sorted... seems there's been a few of these SD issues.

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

Need to place this on post #1 so that it's easy for others to resolve.

If there are other "non documented" things and solutions please let me know.

 

[jaaptina]

I'm always struggling when testing Hifi gear against each other. I now have Denafrips Ares 2 and R26 to compare. When exchanging them sometimes I think to hear a clear difference but than not. However I'm certain to here new things often when listening with R26. Also I never keep the Denafrips plugged in for longer than testing 2 songs. So I'm going to be happy with R26 and sell the Ares.