Leave the ODAC out of it... I have had
good DACs in sound cards and audio interfaces for the last decade, long before the hifi merchants decide to separate them out and turn them into another price-race, cost-snob product.
The ODAC is, anyway, now just one of a bunch of DACs in that price range, and some say that it has been left behind by better units at the same price.
You can say "If you can spend...." for ever. Sure, of course there is always, "If you can spend,"
If you can spend. And it becomes relevant
When you can spend.
Until that day, we all have our budgets, and most of our budgets
can buy
good stuff.
Hifi should be a
bottom-up, not a top-down, pursuit.
Otherwise, it becomes,
"I want to listen to some decent music."
Sure, you'll have to spend a lakh. or ten.
1. Let's start where we are.
2. Let's not fall for the idea that good stuff
has to have multiple zeros on the price.
3. Let's define
good as something that one listen to with little but pleasure, even though one knows that
better exists and is possible, if not affordable.
And, actually, I wasn't thinking so much of the ODAC, as the absurdly cheap HiFiMeDIY, as modded by a forum member, that cost
less than Rs4,000. Did it qualify as "good?" It stood up to stuff at six times its price
amazingly well.
We are in a thread where a guy has Rs50,000 to spend. Your way might be different (and equally valid) but what
I'd do is to spend nearly all of that on active speakers, and the rest on a
decent DAC, of any one of several names that have been mentioned. Of course, I'd
try and up the budget, if I could, but I'd prioritise the speakers, and hope that, whatever else I upgraded, they would last for several iterations of source, etc.
Is garbage-in-garbage-out an ultimate truth? Is
the source really all important? I struggle with this one. Yes, of course, if one is talking real garbage, not only can it not be improved, it will get
worse as the system gets better. But we are not talking real garbage, we are talking
at least bottom-line good.
A brief tale. Back in 1980-something, listening to my cheap clock radio (it sounded awful, especially for music. I guess the speaker was about an inch in diameter) I had the
crazy idea to connect the headphone out to my amplifier! Wow! guess what decent amplification and speakers did for my clock radio!
Give me a year or three. The plan is there, it just needs cash
~