Quote:
Originally Posted by nfreemer
David
How does Direct Stream DAC compare to the D1100? I remember about a year ago you were loving D1100 and even compared it to Esoteric K01 or K01X.
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I did a comparison of the D1100 to the K03-X and it was close. What I found in the past year was I would go to my listening room less and less , have shorter listening sessions. You could say the passion was not there. Something was missing but I couldn’t put my finger on it. While the D1100 is a fine Mcintosh digital pre amp/DAC and I have no disparaging comments I just did not get into the music . I started to sell off my stereo components ie the Aurender N100h, D1100, Oppo 205 and finally my Sonus Faber Elipsa speakers . Lars mentioned he had 2 PS Audio Dac’s ,one was still sealed and he posted it for sale. I started reading about the DirectStream and decided to give it a try. From the moment I played the first song, the music made my jaw drop literally. This was a big surprise as I did not expect to hear so much detail and dynamics. Maybe it has something to do with the upsampling and conversion to DSD? There is magic in this DAC. I know this is a long answer to your question but the DirectStream sounds better than any other DAC I have heard including esoteric . Some will disagree and that’s ok. The esoteric has tremendous build quality , it is a top cdp and transport one thing to also consider , the company makes model changes often because the dac chips can not be upgraded the way PS audio does with software.