Vinshine has dropped their price to $598 ($648 shipped to US). Looks interesting. Plus, they state that the Tomahawk (next level Denafrips) will be announced 15 March.
I waited a very long time before upgrading from a heavily modded Cambridge DACmagic IIa (the original Pink Triangle design) so the Vega struck me as something of a revelation. I still really enjoy it and am seriously considering deploying it at my girlfriend’s place rather than selling.
(This would involve pushing her tolerance for audio boxes a little high, so it may be a long term project. I blotted my copybook over the weekend on a long drive by attempting some Ozark Mountain Daredevils. This resulted in immediate assault with an empty plastic water bottle combined with her frenzied blind stabbing at the car stereo controls to stop the pain. Interstation FM static was deemed preferable).
Unfortunately I can’t setup both DACs to do a meaningful A/B comparison. I think the Spring in NOS mode with upsampled DSD 512 through HQP has a bigger soundstage than I recall with the Vega. I think the Vega presented more detail “up front” although I certainly didn’t find it fatiguing.
The Vega has a remote control and digital volume that the Spring lacks.
I would say to certainly try out the Spring if you want to experiment with DSD512, but if you are content with DSD256 (which the Vega can do with the firmware upgrade) then I wouldn’t think the cost/value of changing was justified. I am attracted to the R2R discrete resistor chain rather than an IC DAC but I couldn’t attribute any particular SQ difference to it because I haven’t made the necessary A/B/X comparison. Similarly I believe the linearity correction from using duplicate R2R chains is a good architecture, but can’t say anything about a comparison. The Spring feels very transparent in my system, but others have thought it a shade warmer and darker in comparison to SABRE DACs. I wouldn’t call that a bad thing.
Some nice review from AudioStream, I agreed listening in NOS mode is what makes this DAC so unique from the rest. Considered the price range, it is simply hard to find one that comes close.
Googling has failed me, does anyone know where one can get one of these in Europe. The DAC looks very interesting and not hyper-expenisve as these things go.
I haven’t done that yet Guy, but might try it this weekend. I’ve never played music through the OS section of the Spring though, so it might need to break in ! NOS all the way here.
also very interested in the Spring, and how it performs with the OS of Roon.
A friend and I compared the Roon OS with the native OS of his Audio-GD DAC19, and here we found the OS of the Audio GD markedly better, to our surprise (we expected the Roon OS to be better due to more processing power being available through the Roon server).
For anyone interested, we tested like this:
Roon without OS -> Audio-GD with OS enabled -> amp,
vs Roon with OS -> Audio-GD with OS disabled -> amp.