My DAC Journey
by Verde and Black
Once upon a time, when I started streaming music in earnest for home listening in a 2 channel system, the device I used was a retired iPhone. It had a 3.5mm jack and at full volume, a 3.5mm to RCA connection functioned as a line level source. It sounded good. When phone upgrades happened, the old phone would cycle into streamer duty. I’m a ride-it-into-the-ground type with my phones, and use them until the lithium ion batteries are annoyingly depleted, so need that wall wart power for the tunes.
Streamer phones were 100% powered through the 30 pin dock connector, and later a lightening connector. Volume on the phone was never touched. All was good.
Then Apple, in their wisdom, elimated the 3.5mm jack. Enter the Apple Lighting Connector Dock, a nice little device, which they have since inexplicably discontinued, but which contained a 3.5mm jack at the back, which at full volume, also served as a line level source, and powered the deadass phone to boot. Elegant. Simple. And the dock somehow sounded better than the phone. But bits are bits?
Fast forward about 8 months. In a fit of spring cleaning, we find a *large* box of CDs, many of them recorded by never-made-it bands that our friends played in 25 or 30 years ago.
They’re not on Spotify. Or Apple Music. Or any of the others. My lazy self never ripped them to a hard drive/itunes. I no longer have a PC with an optical drive.
I buy a Goodwill DVD player for something like $8, RCA out. Sounds good. Glad I can play them. Glad I can hear them.
But…I only have one line level input to work with, so messing with unplugging connections whenever I want to change digital source. Kind of a pain.
Also, I’m starting my own business out of pandemic related necessity.
Googling for solutions to my digital source conundrum, I start to read about DACs. Found this thread.
Read it all. Learn some things for my business, which is not even in the same universe as Schiit, except for the (rather large) notion of differentiation in a crowded field plus customer service.
Also realize, for about a Benjamin plus the Apple Camera Adapter, I can add a Modi (3e at the time), and scrap my cable swapping. And I liked
@Jason Stoddard online persona, and figured tossing his company a hundred bucks was worth it.
Order it.
Holy Schiit. That sounds good.
And, hey, I can AB, with a toggle switch and some adapt button pushing, the same song from streaming and CD. Cool.
But bits are bits. Except my $8 DVD player sounds better bypassing its internal DAC. Odd.
Engineering professor friend at UT Austin gifts me a little 10wpc Integrated Tube Amp he built and it replaces a vintage (recapped) Nikka receiver I quite liked (it now powers some outdoor speakers for the patio). Yowza! Get some sensitive speakers, add a sub.
Time passes. When not traveling, I can no longer live with the old ass, no longer supported airplay speaker in my home office. I’m in there a lot. I listen to music all day. It sounds bad.
I have some old, budget Polk bookshelf speakers not connected to anything and room in my office. Buy a SMSL chip amp, dig out an old phone and the lightning dock. Decent work day tunes. But the chimp amp isn’t really my jam. But, budget and form factor makes it good enough.
Add a dedicated, modern transport for CD to the main system.
Keep reading. Intrigued by the multibit. I’m an analogue guy at heart and still own the first vinyl records I ever purchased with my allowance (Men at Work,
Business as Usual & John Cougar,
American Fool) and Discogs insists I have about $10k in vinyl in the collection (I doubt this valuation).
Couple years of supply chain, nervousa (bits are bits, right?). Finally order the Modi Multibit.
Yowza!
But even more so, moved the 3e into the office today, and that SMSL? I can live with it longer now.
I’ve been binging the MMB2, but man, the 3e, for what I paid? That’s some solid kit.
).
