My gear is about 1:1:1 in cost used prices for DAC, amp, headphones…
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I am a true believer in the importance of the recorded material, music source and DAC over the rest of the chain. That’s just me, and i might change my mind someday. I don’t mind using a front end that costs double the rest of the gear new but beyond that it seems like cheating a bit at times. 
It’s allot of money just so i can conduct experiments, i have like 7 or 8 dacs and have not bothered to sell one in years I have been bored and I’ve been playing around. 
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I think that with new prices my DAC is about 60 percent higher than the headphones and amp each so I guess we’re in a similar camp
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Ideon ayazi mk2 is sub 2k used if you can find one. I am personaly pretty impressed with ur
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When I sold my monoblocks, it was to a guy that lined his walls with speakers and amps; it was essentially his wallpaper. Don’t be that guy 
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If you love your old DACs, set them free.
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…if you need somebody [to take them of your hands], call my nameeee.
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Just fwiw this is more than new (after dealer discount). The staxk should be more in the 5k range
Ok copy, I’ll scratch the Ideon unit no point in paying new prices for old stuff. Thanks for the further heads up.
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BTW…Berk Ref S1 is quite nice for that clean, quick, and revealing sound without sacrificing much naturalness. Really enjoy mine. If you can negotiate 4k, it’s a steal so long as your source is on par and handles coax SPDIF or AES.
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I have sent him an email beginning the process. I’m still fully undecided even at $4k or so simply because I’m doing this just to mess around and not because I actually desire the piece. I spoke to M0N about possible front end conflicts so I am somewhat prepared there. I flip flop allot when I’m just past the amount of cash I was comfortable with spending even by a couple hundred when it’s not for a product going into my main system, which I am extremely pleased with currently 
Some how I’ve missed even starting from the top of the thread - The Terminator II and @M0N s thought.
Wondering if it is time to venture away from Spring 3 KTE / Yggy
EDIT: Never mind it’s an article … my bad
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I’d imagine you could pick one up for $3.5k to $4k and turn your spring 3 for ~$3k. Might be worth making a move. However if it were me I’d save my sheckles and move up to the next tier that Mon talks about; seems like quite a substantial jump in performance rather perhaps a sideways move.
Maybe sell the spring and yggy and get something like this 
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Yah. Get that and not the d1-dual or mojo that @bmn1251 is selling. I want those. I dont have the money and wont pay for them but theyre mine…
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So I got my APL coming in, this dac honestly is going to decide if I want to end up trying more stuff or just settle. If it can exceed the performance of the totaldac and/or offer a different, different enough change to my system, I might revisit both older dacs that I didn’t give enough digital source love, and some newer stuff as well. Really going to come down to how that goes lol. Thinking either trying a top spec ANUK or SW1X, CH Precision stack, or having someone I know try and modify a dac for me, but I can’t say too much about that : ). Still have interest in horizon, not much else at the moment. I’m typically at the point where people fully move to vinyl, but I will never make that step so it’s now end of the line for me
So if this thread is continued or not will solely depend on the APL, let’s see how it goes lol. If it can’t rival the totaldac, I’m just going to upgrade to mk3 and never think about it again. Although other setups might change around
Also have some interest in checking out the oladra, but I’m going to wait a bit for that
Other random notes, I might end up buying a fair amount of speaker amps and preamps to experiment with headphone usage, but that’s not relevant to the thread, already have a few potentially lined up (but still deciding if I’ll bother with that or not). Considering spectral, airtight, ch precision, vitus, higher end riviera, audio tekne, shindo, higher end allnic, thrax, wavac, and others. Aiming around the under 50k for both pre + power or int range in my head. But I’ve got to sell shit first lol
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Does it know what’s at stake? Lol good luck I’m sure I say this for many here we look forward to your impressions and insights
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I hope so lol. Well I’m sure it will be able to tackle totaldac when it comes to DSD performance (severely lacking, but that’s expected), but I’ll be surprised if it handles pcm just as well. Really it’s just I’m super satisfied with the totaldac, and the only reason I grabbed the APL was because I do have a significant portion of DSD and enjoy a lot of it, something the Pacific really delivered on that the totaldac didn’t capitalize as well on. Only reason, otherwise I wouldn’t really be interested in a new dac
I am kinda deep down hoping the APL doesn’t bring all that much extra to the table, then I can just forget about any future dac changes and not worry about it lol. But I’m trying to not let that color my experiences
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Thanks I’m off the ledge with the Terminator II, you’re right.
Bmn1251’s Mojo is tempting, but also a bit out of budget with out moving the other pieces, and I’m just not confident in the market currently.
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Side side note, I do also plan on trying an abbas dac since they seem interesting and some people here seem interested as well, same with the wavedream ultra and dcs lina (and the accompanying headphone system), but it’s not going to be a priority for me
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I personally wasn’t really that big of a fan of the Terminator, that being said from what I hear from other members on here it really does seem like the sweetspot for denafrips is either the pontus ii or venus ii rather than the terminators, so those seem like a better value pick for the money. But can’t say for sure since I haven’t heard those
I do agree that looking around that 5-6k used range will give you a ton of potentially worthwhile multiple jump nextlevel options that are a stark upgrade from something like a terminator, but there are also great options in that 3-4k used range that would be a solid jump over what you have too, really all depends on how far you want to go, and what you are after
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