I beg to differ, it is not about CD, it is more about synergy. This dac works magically with woo wa22 and solid speaker amp M1 plus. The magic of this dac is you don't need to buy crazy equally expensive parts in every link, which could be too much of a good thing.
Did you listen to the AC Kassandra at all?TOTL dacs are like TOTL cables they are tuned to please certain kind of taste and people, and diminishing return is crazy!
Personally speaking, I am impressed with the most affordable one in this bunch which is Esoteric N05XD, which has the best height and width. Yet, it has a house sound as many TOTL dacs in that you know you are listening via the dac. The streaming part is meh which doesn’t allow upsamping even it is developed by LUMIN and can be controlled by LUMIN APP. The Headphone output is also just ok, it is not bad but neither good. Dac is definitely the forte of N05XD, which is their new discrete dac. It is might be one of my favorite digital sound as so detailed, layered and nuanced. It is definitely not detailed in a way of Mytek Empire or Rockna Wavedream where all the details are forcing into your ears, but the detailed are represented in a nuanced way. I’m told by other owners that it will be a huge change adding another clock, which would be another amount of investment. Plus I believe it will sound better with better source which adds to the cost. But man in terms of price to performance ratio, it is no brainer as one of the best digital dacs.
Yet I really love to buy 01XD. While it has doubled cost but it also has doubled number of discrete chips per channel plus better clock which seems to be the same clock as the flagship. 01XD is my favorite Dac at Chicago Axpona 2022 btw.
X1 is typical LUMIN sound, the streamer part of X1 is clearly better than Esoteric 05XD. X1 is also tighter and more dynamic, yet the deal breaker for me is that it sounds flat like Rockna Wavedream and Matrix X with lack of depth and height.
Metiner Dac 3 definitely has the most analogue sounding in these dac yet compared to TOTL R2R as my reference Mojo Mystique, it still sounds digital. It reminds me of M2 but am upgraded version. I feel folks who love analogue sound may love this tuning.
I bought it used without hearing it first haha so I guess you can call it auditioning with risk. But honestly I read so much about it and after spending some time with other DACs I feel this is a good direction for what I'm looking for. We'll see if I'm right soon enough lol
This doesn't make sense. 2v is within spec for single-ended output, regardless of whether you stream or use CD as input. The type of digital input should have 0 effect on DAC's output voltage.
Thanks for the impression. These are some nice looking gear. I have some issues with characterizing Meitner MA-3 as TOTL. To be completely frank, Meitner is the budget brand of Emm Labs. In order to reduce costs, many of the techniques used in the Emm Labs dacs to reduce noise (and others) are not implemented. I would start at Emm Labs dac2x, but you should really be testing Emm Labs DA2, which is TOTL. If you are looking for a more vinyl-style analog sound, you should look instead at Linn Akurate and Klimax lines.TOTL dacs are like TOTL cables they are tuned to please certain kind of taste and people, and diminishing return is crazy!
Personally speaking, I am impressed with the most affordable one in this bunch which is Esoteric N05XD, which has the best height and width. Yet, it has a house sound as many TOTL dacs in that you know you are listening via the dac. The streaming part is meh which doesn’t allow upsamping even it is developed by LUMIN and can be controlled by LUMIN APP. The Headphone output is also just ok, it is not bad but neither good. Dac is definitely the forte of N05XD, which is their new discrete dac. It is might be one of my favorite digital sound as so detailed, layered and nuanced. It is definitely not detailed in a way of Mytek Empire or Rockna Wavedream where all the details are forcing into your ears, but the detailed are represented in a nuanced way. I’m told by other owners that it will be a huge change adding another clock, which would be another amount of investment. Plus I believe it will sound better with better source which adds to the cost. But man in terms of price to performance ratio, it is no brainer as one of the best digital dacs.
Yet I really love to buy 01XD. While it has doubled cost but it also has doubled number of discrete chips per channel plus better clock which seems to be the same clock as the flagship. 01XD is my favorite Dac at Chicago Axpona 2022 btw.
X1 is typical LUMIN sound, the streamer part of X1 is clearly better than Esoteric 05XD. X1 is also tighter and more dynamic, yet the deal breaker for me is that it sounds flat like Rockna Wavedream and Matrix X with lack of depth and height.
Metiner Dac 3 definitely has the most analogue sounding in these dac yet compared to TOTL R2R as my reference Mojo Mystique, it still sounds digital. It reminds me of M2 but am upgraded version. I feel folks who love analogue sound may love this tuning.
Fortunately this is not one of those amps where it’s better balanced than SE. Before my purchase I had a conversation with my dealer and several users and they all recommend getting the SE version unless you uses for those outputs. They noted no difference between the outputs. The jump in price is significant and we are basically paying for the extra modules needed for balance operations. Works out great for me as I’m only using tube amps.
I use 2 amps - agd he9 and tube amp. Tube is se and he9 is fully balanced. Anyway I haven’t heard noticeable difference while compare SE and balance output on previous Dac (terminator plus). There were some difference but RCA sound more full bodied but with less separation between channels. I chose RCA. So may be I have to stay with signature SE with WD also…
