[hodgjy]

@hodgjy, That was great story. Thanks for sharing. I knew a little about the chips used in the V-DACs but didn't know all the particularities of how they functioned. I have the OG version of the V-DAC. Mine is 11 years old and I've been using it and enjoying it for all these years. I've gone through 4 amp pairings over the years. Currently it's paired up with a JDS Labs Atom and the synergy is phenomenal. My HD650 headphones have never sounded better. In fact, before getting the Atom I didn't enjoy the HD650 at all. The previous amps I had, a couple Schiits and a Matrix M-Stage, were probably bottlenecking the V-DAC feed.

@d-t, I was really close to selling my V-DAC a few months ago. Was going to use the proceeds to buy a Modi 3. So glad I didn't follow through on such a grievous error. I never bought a V-PSU but I did have one of those big Pyramid DC power supplies. That psu started acting weird this year. It was over 10 years old so I guess it was starting to fail. I bought a brand new MF OEM power brick off of eBay. The sound is great with even the power brick.

Oddly enough, I prefer the sound when powering it from the wall-wart vs. the upgraded V-PSU II. The wall-wart is linear, so it's a decent power source, but it doesn't have all that fancy magic dirty power filtration of the V-PSU II. In comparison, the wall-wart sounds a little warmer and the V-PSU II sounds leaner. I'm not a big believer in major differences between power sources (if they don't have something wrong with them, that is), so maybe this is just placebo. I went back and forth and the differences were detectable. Maybe my ears prefer dirty power.

All in all, this is a nice little DAC that some of you might have some fun toying with. It can probably be found for a few bucks and is probably cheaper than the price of tubes some roll into their Vali 2s.

 

[BIG POPPA]

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