Some were comparing it favorably to the May which is a dac I’m still considering as I am getting another amp hopefully in November that can take more advantage of a balanced signal.
Other than those two dacs I’m now considering the Sagra as my top choice just given the guaranteed synergy with my setup. I was hoping I might be able to pick one up in a month or two but I just submitted my LCD-4z to the LCD-5 trade-in program so have that expense that will delay a dac upgrade further. But I’m happy with the sound of my system currently so it’s not a big deal.
I’ve heard the 004 but not the 005. But I was not very impressed by the 004 that much at all, personally thought it sounded a bit better than the d90 but really not great. I don’t know what the difference is between the 4 and the 5, but if they didn’t fully overhaul it I don’t know if I’d have much confidence in it. But can’t really say since I haven’t heard it
Edit: looking at the 005 now it does really look like they beefed up and redid alot, so that’s interesting and would give me a bit more confidence
Gotcha. Well I might just stick with where you are going or were considering before or just wait and see what happens, as if you are already pretty happy with your system it shouldn’t be a big rush lol
Yeah I should still consider the Amber 3. Probably could get it new for close to the price of the Sagra. Lots of good choices out there and taking more time to decide doesn’t hurt.
I watched this review the other day of my current dac, the Pontus II:
The guy makes a comparison to the Amber 3 in it which I found interesting. It sort of sounded like he preferred the Pontus II so makes me question if the Amber is a worthwhile upgrade. However he said something along the lines of “I don’t want more resolution so I prefer the Pontus II” which made me question if I trust his opinion of the Pontus and the Amber.
Also, in talking on discord with people about different dacs I feel like I’m starting to get a better idea of what I’d like from a dac. I value imaging, depth, layering, texture, dynamics, and detail. I don’t mind smooth as long as something is smooth and detailed but I don’t really want a laid back sound. I’d like the dac to encourage me to tap my foot or bob my head to the music instead of encouraging me to fall asleep. That being said are there any other dacs I should consider or ones I should reconsider?
How is the Pontus II? Haven’t heard much about it yet.
I had the og Pontus awhile back and only for a short time so I’m probably not going to be much help here. That said the Amber 3 that I’m currently using is a significant step up from that.
No secret to some people here but I wasn’t a fan of the Pontus and I find the Amber 3 to be much more refined and natural and spacious. Blacker background and more effortlessly detailed. Basically a great step up in ever conceivable way. How this translates to the Pontus II I couldn’t say.
It’s less than half the price though and while this reviewer may subjectively prefer it not many things in audio are legitimate giant killers.
One thing you might be able to take from this is that it seems like Amber 3 and Pontus II have different goals potentially. So if you like the Pontus II maybe the Amber 3 isn’t the right upgrade for you.
I like the Pontus II, it’s the nicest dac that I’ve owned. However, I haven’t owned many dacs. I started with a Schiit Bifrost Uber (the original bifrost with upgraded analog stage), then I got an ADI-2, and then the Pontus II. The Pontus is the most resolving and has good stage size in width and decent depth, and I like the texture I’m hearing with it compared to the other dacs.
But, I’m sure there’s a lot more to be had from a nicer dac. When I connect the ADI-2 to the Formula S or just listen through a Monoprice all in one THX thing I notice that some parts of the music are a bit more forward but sometimes this can sound kind of harsh. I worry that the Pontus II is a bit laid back or too smoothed over so I think I would like to find something that is a bit more forward sounding but not in the harsh way that the ADI-2 pushes things to the front.
I need to go somewhere and demo a bunch of different dacs to really figure out what kind of a sound that I like but most of the places around me sell higher end stuff over 10k and I don’t know of any dealers near me that sell dacs more in the 5k or less range.
For my next dac, I do think that I’d like something more different than similar to the Pontus II so I definitely won’t be crossing off a Lampizator from my list. I would say the Amber 3 and the Baltic 3 are two dacs that I am still considering.
@M0N I saw your 2541 thread on hifi guides. Did you ever compare the 2541 to the Sagra? They’re definitely in different price brackets but I think the ladders in the 2541 are newer than the Soekris ones in the Sagra. Obviously the implementation matters a lot but seems like a logical comparison
The sagra is still a noticeable step above in most all aspects from the 2541, although signature wise I think it’s a slight bit more relaxed, a bit softer leaning compared to the sagra which is interesting. The sagra seems more pushy, authoritative, harder edged, and forward in comparison. But their signatures still lean more toward the dryer forward side of things. So if you like one you would like the other imo. The sagra is a logical upgrade from the 2541 and 1541
I got to do a side by side when I bought the Sagra. Everything M0N said lines up. I felt like the Sagra was just a clearer, more detailed and more engaging version of the 2541.
Thanks for the impressions of the two. There’s been some discussion of the two dacs on another audio forum and I get the impression some don’t like XI Audio although I know they haven’t heard any of their stuff either. Any way just makes it hard to get a feel for differences between a product when there are biases towards one or the other.
I’d like to hear one of the Soekris dacs at some point as their products seem to be a good value with frequent hardware updates but I think the Sagra makes more sense for a dac if I chose that over some of the other options we’ve discussed.
The xi is somewhat picky with synergy, and if someone will like it or not is going to depend on the chain and preferences at hand, it’s a less all rounder and more a specialist in what it does for the money imo. I do think the sagra competes more at the level of yggy a2, spring 2 kte, morpheus rather than the level of like an amber 3, la voce s3, may kte, wavelight, etc. so for some chains it isn’t a good value, but I think with an xi stack already it has good enough synergy to make it worth considering
A lot of the xi audio hate isn’t around sound but instead around design and price (you will see the same complaints levied against lampizator, passlabs, and basically anyone who doesn’t use their own proprietary dac in the high end space/has simple layouts for amps). TBH, the idea of 3k+ (and often 10k+) RRP dac not using their own actual dac (be is a sokeris board or an ESS/akm chip) kinda bugs me as well, but I havent heard them so I’m not going to pass judgement until I do.
The problem here really comes into the issues of expectation bias. I guarantee that I will go into dacs like that with low expectations. That will absalutely affect how I hear the dac and unless you take active measures to get over those biases it can be hard to do. This fact of simply how expectation bias works makes it easy to write off subjective opinions of others (and you see this all the time). There are people in this hobby into some absalutely wild levels of snake oil and others who think nothing at all is audible and that alone makes it hard to figure out who’s opinion to trust. Ultimately, every purchase in audio will be a gamble for one reason or another. Personaly, I will very likely buy a sagra dac and an amber 3 when one pops up used for a decent price dispite the fact that they just use off the shelf boards kinda bugs the fuck out of me because, I’m currious (and know that if I buy well I dont stand to realy loose anything).
TL;DR this was kind of a long rant to basicaly just say audio is always a gamble. Xi audio (and others) have austensibly wonky/lazy engineering (when compared to other products at the price) and that is why they get the hate. Personaly, while I may not always agree precisely with the sonic descriptions of @M0N, @Polygonhell and @Veritas for items I own, I have yet to buy something on their req and dislike it. That is why I will very likely end up taking the jump to a sagra/amber 3 even though their internals do honestly bug me quite a bit
I mean. You don’t have to really take a gamble. You can just listen to my Lampi to get a better idea of the house sound before you commit. Although, you may want something higher up than an Amber after that
Eh, I have no real problem with this, it’s also common enough in dacs that I don’t really see why people would get upset about that. Personally I’m of the mindset that if someone can take a dac solution and improve upon it with better implementation, power to them. What matters is the end result, not really the means to get there imo. I’d rather have a company produce a better product implementing someone else’s components rather then them try their hand at making everything from scratch and having a worse result because of that. Urging every dac manufacturer to make their own dac solution is a mistake imo, it’s all in implementation, the actual d/a chips/solutions don’t mean anything if they can’t be implemented well, and if someone can do it with an existing solution great, or if they feel the need to make something new that’s great as well
I really don’t understand how that can be called wonky or lazy engineering, imo it’s actually pretty efficient and effective if it gets good results. Good engineering doesn’t involve reinventing the wheel for everything or making a proprietary solution when they don’t have to, what matters is the quality of the end product and the result it produces. Could have everything in it designed from the ground up by one company, but if it sounds bad then it’s a waste, that’s what I’d call wonky engineering. But I’m not an engineer so I can’t really say what’s good engineering and what’s bad lol
Honestly the whole argument of making something entirely new I think more appeals for people’s desire to have something unique or different from what’s out there, to make it feel more special, and honestly that can easily become marketing fodder. Just because something is a unique design doesn’t mean it’s a worthwhile one or produces results superior to a more common but well designed one
Also to make this clear, none of this is directed at anyone here lol
Getting off topic
To touch on lampizator, while it might be an I think wolfson chip, the digital processing around that chip is unique and ground up, the implementation is unique, the output stage is unique, the power supply is unique, those dacs have far more unique design aspects than not. To discount all that because of the use of an off the shelf chip seems wild to me
For the sagra it’s sort of the same way, although to a lesser extent since I think the whole digital side of things might be soekris, but the psu and output section are far beefed up, there could be more digital processing changes but I’d not now since I’m not someone who both knows about or works with/creates these sorts of things. But again I think it’s just kinda dumb to dismiss an improvement upon an existing platform
From what I know pass designs are still unique, not that inventive though, but just a very high quality implementation of the circuit, which again I don’t see the problem in personally, if it really was as simple as people said then things would be pretty different, it does take skill to make a good sounding amp even if the circuit is at first glance fairly simplistic
That seems like how I go from wanting a dac501 who’s formfactor actualy fits within my lifestyle to trying to figure out how to discretely carry a GG2 into the office
see, logically I agree with this, but it still kinda doesnt sit right for me just on an emotional level. not trying to claim that feeling is based in anything realistic at all.
which is why I called it ostensibly lazy. I am not an electrical engineer so I have literally 0 idea what “is” and “isnt” good engineering in headphone electronics other than maybe floating ground lines. That said, its quite easy to look at something’s internals (lets go topical here) like the powerman and go “thats it” (that was certainly my initial reaction to the internal shots tbh)? its not something based in actual science but just a gut reaction that a lot have and where I see a lot of the hate coming from on the xi audio hate specifically.
The actual DAC part is an incredibly small part of a DAC, yes at the entry level they all sound the same because everyone is just using implementations straight out of a data sheet.
I saw an interview with Lukasz Fikus in which IIRC he stated 80% of the BOM in the Lampizator DAC’s is in the PSU, it’s actually not very surprising, but it can be hard to wrap your head around, if you’ve never looked at what for example makes a high end amp cost what it does.
There’s different camps of component design, some prefer complex with medium quality components, some prefer simplistic/minimal/shortest signal path with higher quality components, both can produce equally valid/great results. So it really just depends on what you are looking at. From what I know, the simpler circuits are actually harder to get right sonically so they require more skill and effort in implementation to get good results. But if that’s actually true or not I really don’t know. At this point in audio I really just don’t consider what’s inside, and instead consider what I hear since that’s really why I’m buying it for, not for what it looks like inside, or what it’s theoretical/measured performance may be, but people buy for different things.
Yup. I logical realize that and have experiences with how much implementation matters for dac chips as well. Its not a logical reaction but one I have none the less
I hear you on this gut feeling of using “off the shelf parts” in a premium DAC. Why buy a Sara when you can just buy a Soekris 2541 with the same “engine” for 1/3rd the price?? It just doesn’t sit right…but I think we’re wrong in that. Polygon makes great points about the decoder being a small part of the design. On the performance impact of using “off the shelf” parts, let me me throw out some automotive examples.
The Mercedez Benz Class A uses an Engine made by another car manufacturer (Renault).
The Lamborghini Huracan has an Audi engine under the hood.
Lotus uses Toyota engines in some of their models.
Nobody is saying that a Lotus and a Camry have similar performance, or that Lotus’s are Toyota level cars.
But I have to admit that when I read through the Lampizator dac specs and see that it uses a DS dac chip it still makes me squirm…even though I know better!!!
Polygon makes great points about the decoder being a small part of the design. On the performance impact of using “off the shelf” parts, let me me throw out some automotive examples.