I’m sure someone who doesn’t care about measurements believes the SMSL DO300EX sounds amazing in DSD Direct - but it measures ‘broken’ actually. I’ve measured a couple different samples.
SMSL responded to me and fixed the SMSL D6 DSD Direct issues I found. They issued a firmware update. I’m still not sure if it is true DSD Direct even though it measures well, because the DSD Direct measurement looks identical to the non-DSD Direct mode. But still very excellent after the firmware update. There are ESS based DACs that measure and sound fantastic, although obviously not DSD Direct. So I treat D-6 like that now.
Latter With DO300EX and some others, they have stopped responding to me
iFi Pro iDSD measures pretty badly, especially as DSD512
AH90 DSD Direct is real, like Gustard A26. Gustard know what they are doing. Its just unfortunate you need to manually ask for the firmware. And you get NAA built-in. You can even manually update to v5 NAA inside (not easy though)
Get a Cyan2/Spring3 for excellent measurements and true DSD Direct and discrete design.
Even a used Spring3 if you can see one. Even Spring2 excellent I believe, in some measurements better than Spring3
I have iFi NEO iDSD which I believe is very similar. In fact Aapo (the customer support guy) is using it all the time with Neumann NDH 20 headphones (+ Oratory headphone corrections) and the combination works great.
The performance is vastly better in DSD mode than with PCM inputs.
My personal travel set with my MacBook Pro M1Max is iFi xDSD Gryphon and Shure SRH1540 headphones (also with Oratory headphone corrections). I’m very happy with the combo and I’m not really aware of any better portable battery powered DSD Direct DAC… The xDSD Gryphon performs somewhat better than the NEO iDSD.
I use the iFi ZD3 with balanced Sennheiser HD660S2 cans, and single-ended RCA into an older stereo. I am very happy with this set up in my office and have been using it for a little over a1 year. You will likely find that the power that you use will have a big impact on sound. It works with basic 5v but shows a massive fidelity improvement with the iFi iPower2 or other higher amperage (2.5+) power supply which is needed to give the ZD3 a fair shake.
For NEO iDSD, we use through USB3 SuperSpeed cable, no external PSU at all. So the DAC is powered solely through the USB3. This gives better objective performance than what I get using the provided external iFi PSU.
I’ll looking to set up streaming from HQ player in a Mac mini to stream via Ethernet into a Holo Audio Red (running NAA) then input via usb into my Marantz SA10.
Does anyone know if there will be issues with this set up? I read somewhere that Jussi streams from his pc into the SA12SE (directly?) so not sure if anyone knows that this will work.
Also, if I am to add a USB isolator like intona 7054 between the red and the marantz, will there be issues? I saw someone having issues doing this into the holo audio dac. Thanks!
In my experience 7054 (the plastic box, industrial version) should work with pi based devices like the Holo Red. I do have compatibility issue with the 7055 (the metal chassis version which supports usb 3.0)
SA10 should be very similar to SA12SE. I have a passive cooled living room PC (i5-7600T) connected to the SA12SE through Intona 7054 and no issues what so ever. I have not tried this combination with Holo Red, but I would expect it to work (7054 or 7054-X).
I trust this one cancels ground loops but it is known about Intona that it deals not only with DC (ground loops) but also with AC noise.
I experience no audible hum with my DACs, so I have no indication for ground loops, but adding USB isolation always helped me to get blacker background (to make low level sounds better audible etc.).
