You should of packaged it with the 2.2pf you sold me. Jk.
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Is there a good combo streamer/DAC/amp in this world? Is the Bartok good? Is there something (much) cheaper? Preamp is a bonus but far from a must…
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For headphones I assume.
The Naim offerings look interesting, but below your price point, I think Esoteric has one (but I doubt the headphone out was a priority in the design).
The Bartok, probably a better DAC than it is an amp.
The headphone amp on the Dave isn’t horrible, but you’ll still need a streamer.
There are a lot of streamer DAC combos.
You’ll be looking at compromises over separates, there are some wins for DAC’s in an amp, but your putting all that noise in a single box, probably with a single PSU.
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Honestly I think it’s a pick 2 out of 4 situation
Streamer, DAC, preamp, headphone amp
Streamer & DAC
DAC & preamp
DAC & headphone amp
Preamp & headphone amp
Starting adding too many things to the mix, and you either end up with a very unbalanced product, an overly expensive product, or a very mediocre overall product. Even within the pick 2 idea, things still end up being reasonably unbalanced most of the time.
You really don’t find units that excel at all fronts often, and to be honest I don’t think it’s also fair to expect a company to do that either. Asking a mfg to be equally good at both analog and digital doesn’t typically end well, and the ones that do go well are incredibly expensive to do right, so typically you end up unbalanced with compromise
I’d still personally advocate for separates in most cases, but if you did combine things, I’d say getting a good dac with a built in streamer and then a separate headphone amp is likely the path with the most options without being stupid sized.
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I also think that it’s easier to make a good combo in say pre/headphone amp and DAC/pre or DAC/streamer but for some reason a good DAC/amp is a rarity.
Have you considered the COS D10?
There’s really only a few I can think of that I’d actually consider balanced in terms of headphone and dac performance while still keeping decent value:
Neve/Field lice RNDAC
Questyle CMA Twelve Master
Goldmund HDA Telos (a bit more amp focused)
T+A HA200
I guess Bartok but I still think that’s pretty heavily dac focused
Canever ZeroUno DAC-HPA
Sony DMP-Z1 (desktop enough lol)
Bricasti M3H (more dac leaning but more than serviceable headphone amp to where I’d consider it as an aio)
Oh wait, the bricasti actually has a solid network card, dac, and headphone amp (hit or miss preamp though), very reasonably priced in comparison to other options too
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When you mentioned this a while back I tried to look for one, they’re nonexistant.
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AKM shit basically shut them down I’d assume, wonder when they’ll come back
Oh is that the new? Wonder how it is, COS stuff I’ve heard in the past has been nice. If anyone ends up with one would be curious on their thoughts lol
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Yeah it’s their latest one. I don’t know how it compares to the D1 though. I seems like it can replace a lot of components but until I can sell my Abbas, I probably won’t try something new
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What are your exact requirements and use case? Small changes in that can change the recomendations quite wildly.
I might be downsizing my entire system. So this might be the one thing I still own (TBD honestly).
I’m looking into different options to what I might end up with instead of my current chain. Might also be driving simpler headphones to make it easier in life.
A lot of open questions and still some flexibility on budget and use cases knowing that compromises will have to be made.
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Do you have a general budget you are targeting? Realisticaly you are pretty deep as is, so if its mkre about simplification than the money there are some solid options even keeping sus. If you want to reduce how much you have tied up i would personaly look into ecosystems instead of AIO devices. Something like a ferrum oor + their new dac that should be out soon, maybe a spring 3 + bliss (though that one is big), or possibly even a gold note ds-10 + power amp are all solid posabilities that shpuld help you cut back both size and money
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Tough time to be moving an entire system, the market is looking for deep discount deals or rare pieces only.
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yeah I know, I don’t see that changing anytime soon though. I bought all my gear second hand so I don’t think it’s going to be major losses and am not really in a hurry or emergency to recoup cash. I think some will go faster than others once I make the decision to post and what I’ll sell. Still going through ideas and options.
Those are solid points. It’s more about the money tied up than the simplification part so might end up with separates if I find a good simple combo I like and stays under a certain (still undecided and flexible) budget. I thought it might be easier to get it done with a single device but kind of knew what the answers are going to be. Hard to find a jack of all trades when you’re coming from higher end systems. Not that I’ve reached the summit but I’ve been close enough. Thinking about what I might want to end up with until I buy again a full system is an interesting challenge and probably worth a thread of its own.
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you’re not referring to the Erco I assume? are they building a dedicated DAC? haven’t heard of that.
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They are workong on a dedicated dac
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Oh cool. I liked the Oor and Hypsos, good for the money.