Best DAC under 1lac?

[EswarReddy]

I am looking to know best dac under 1lac. Need your suggestions.

 

[chander]

If you believe measurements & ASR - SMSL & Topping - most around 30-50K odd should be better than or equal to everything else.

If you believe the audiophile reviews online there a few top rated denafrips, chords & gustards.

If you believe your ears - considering you are in a city with many FMs - I would suggest, get in touch with & request FMs if you can hear their DACs in their setups.

My recommendations - based on devices I have heard -
RME ADI 2 DAC FS
Chord Qutest

****USED market opens up more options.

 

[fLUX]

There is nothing like a best dac out there for any price range which is evident from the fact there is very less consensus for most of the options out there

All of them fall short in some aspect, some more than the other. I would recommend you to first decide what exactly you are looking out from the dac realistically & accordingly delve further .

Some options i would recommend in r2r( Commercial options - Denafrips Ares II, Metrum Onyx/Jade used , Gustard R26 used or DIY built options like 1862/Soekris ) or delta sigma dacs ( E70v for AKM , RME ADI 2 FS akm/ess etc).

 

[EswarReddy]

If you believe measurements & ASR - SMSL & Topping - most around 30-50K odd should be better than or equal to everything else.

If you believe the audiophile reviews online there a few top rated denafrips, chords & gustards.

If you believe your ears - considering you are in a city with many FMs - I would suggest, get in touch with & request FMs if you can hear their DACs in their setups.

My recommendations - based on devices I have heard -
RME ADI 2 DAC FS
Chord Qutest

****USED market opens up more options.

RME ADI 2 DAC FS
Chord Qutest
These are out of my budget. May be i need to look in used one.

 

[CKumar]

Mine Soekris was diyed by our FM only. Dac board was hand carried from US and diyed locally .
I know atleast 2 FM who can diy Soekris dac.
@Prodigy and @surfatwork. Mine was done by @Prodigy as both of us stayed in Bangalore.
You can also check @surfatwork thread for his diyed one box solution along with streamer and Soekris.

 

[yogibear]

Have ECDesigns Power DAC B to sell, mint condition. If interested, PM.

 

[jai1611]

Starting point would be what features you want - resolutions support needed (DSD etc or 16/44 is enough), connectivity (USB/i2s or coax/aes is enough)

If you dont need these, the best options would likely be vintage ones. With modern features, used options would still likely be better but not always

 

[Amarendra]

I am looking to know best dac under 1lac. Need your suggestions.

Check if the rest of your system is resolving enough to notice the difference between DACs. Its possible that you may not notice any difference (depending on your source/ streamer) not just between DACs but also in the absence of a discrete DAC. Also before you throw in a lot of money do test some options in your specific chain- its possible since you are in Bangalore.

 

[chander]

What is your existing chain @EswarReddy?

 

[Passive_audio_enthusiast]

RME ADI 2 DAC FS
Chord Qutest
These are out of my budget. May be i need to look in used one.

If you are not particular about soundstage width the old chord mojo can be had under 20k, and at this price it would be hard to beat. I follow ASR, although I agree to many things they said at home I could easily tell apart between the Topping stack (D90+A90D) and the mojo. For a month, I splitted hair to judge which is better and I had no certain answer as both are doing different things in a better way. When I put the cost also into perspective, I gave up that slight upgrade on dry quick bass and wider soundstage on the topping for the more natural timbre on the mojo and the more 3 dimensional sound on it. I don’t miss the Topping stack at all, and as per ASR it’s the SOTA now. I stopped looking at DACs at this point as to me, adding a DSP to correct my room would make a bigger difference than moving forward to a higher tier DAC. If you are not a fan of narrow soundstage, then I guess mini DSP flex is a great device which can do more magic than a standalone DAC can do.

 

[surfatwork]

Agree with some of the earlier posts. The room plays a HUGE role which is often overlooked. Far more significant than minute differences between two decent DACs.
And your DAC's tonal output needs to gel with the rest of your system (and the room). Some combinations with mid range components can sound mind blowing while a top tier system, having way more zeros than I can afford, need not necessarily sound better, or even as good.

 

[EswarReddy]

What is your existing chain @EswarReddy?

Rpi discreet r2r dac hat , audiolab 6000a with castle knight 2 speakers.

 

[reignofchaos]

Rpi discreet r2r dac hat , audiolab 6000a with castle knight 2 speakers.

What are you missing in your setup? What do you want more over your hat dac?

 

[Passive_audio_enthusiast]

Agree with some of the earlier posts. The room plays a HUGE role which is often overlooked. Far more significant than minute differences between two decent DACs.
And your DAC's tonal output needs to gel with the rest of your system (and the room). Some combinations with mid range components can sound mind blowing while a top tier system, having way more zeros than I can afford, need not necessarily sound better, or even as good.

Correcting the room itself will let your hear more details than changing the devices. It’s always there if the DAC is transparent enough, but room plays bad altering the Freq.response until sound reaches our ears.

 

[CKumar]

Correcting the room itself will let your hear more details than changing the devices. It’s always there if the DAC is transparent enough, but room plays bad altering the Freq.response until sound reaches our ears.

Do you mean treating room acoustically?

 

[EswarReddy]

What are you missing in your setup? What do you want more over your hat dac?

Want to see with new dac,how much improvement i can benifit from my system. So trying to barrow the dac from some one or friends and checking. If its any improvement need to plan dac upgrade path

 

[reignofchaos]

Want to see with new dac,how much improvement i can benifit from my system. So trying to barrow the dac from some one or friends and checking. If its any improvement need to plan dac upgrade path

That is good - at least you will know what bar you need to clear.

 

[magma]

Hmm
If the answer to your question
Was that easy

"Best ..... Product under xxx rs "

There would be just one company making that product at that price range in the world
No competition would exist

If measurements are to be followed
There will probably be a new best dac from the topping , smsl range every quarter

Where they release a new dac at a certain price point that "measures" better than a previous model

ASR is kept busy with that

And if that were to go buy some excellent products would be put to shame by some absolute junk

When the Akm factory burnt down a couple year ago

Ess sabre was promoted to be the best thing in the dac game
Well, im not sure about the best thing , it was more like the "only" thing avaibke

Now that akm is back in the game
Options have increased opinions have also differed

Anyway
Enough of the rant


In about a lac
You have the gustards , the matrix , the denafrips even the audio GD
That I personally respect and I find value

In fact there are even some streamers today that have some very nice in built dacs

Some of the western stuff I find has more name and marketting costs associated to their price than their actual product
3 of them infact ( that I know of) are simply using the entire board from one one of those companies mentioned above

The lumin
Great great product !!!
But only their top end
Their new budget dac is simply their attempt to cover the lower price bracket market by capitalising on the fame they got from their higher end stuff
But their budget stuff in reality is nowhere as close and nowhere as VFM

 

[muralimmreddy]

In about a lac
You have the gustards , the matrix , the denafrips even the audio GD
That I personally respect and I find value

are you getting audio GD dac's as well to india?

 

[Passive_audio_enthusiast]

Do you mean treating room acoustically?

Acoustically or using a DSP. DSP can be just a DSP program running on a PC.