Recently I tried the K13 R2R dac and to my surprise it did not go well.
I had immediate ear fatigue the moment I pressed play - which is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen with r2r dacs.
I had the same sensation I get with some heavily processed electronic music that uses phase distortion or time delays between left and right channels. I know this feeling because I dabble with making music in a daw and I’ve played with the effects.
The fatigue happens even with familiar recordings of accoustic instruments so I don’t think it was an issue with the source material.
In short it just sounded broken so it’s possible it was a defective unit.
I wanted to ask if anyone had a similar experience with r2r dacs before I try another one.
I find R2R DACs “itchy” like there’s something funny in the treble that always bothers me after long listening. I haven’t tried the K13 R2R, but I have tried the Modi Multibit 1, the Bifrost 2 and 2/64, and the Holo Cyan 2. I also find AKM DACs “itchy” for whatever reason, I don’t really know what it is and I wish it wasn’t there. I ended up going back to non-AKM delta-sigma DACs.
Funny, but I found the early ESS DACs to have too much ”glare” in the upper midrange and treble. Then, I got a Canever ZeroUno, which uses a legacy ESS 9018 DAC. It sounds wonderful. Why? Because Mario wrote his own code for filtering, used Lundhal transformers in the analog section. It’s more about what happens with DAC processing.
FWIW, I have a Topping DX9. and the AKM DAC version in that sounds very good. Quite different from a RME ADI-2, which had a earlier AKM DAC version.
Never been a fan of R2R DACs. They cost more, and just do not seem to sound as good as delta/sigma DACs.
I’ve also heard ESS DACs I thought had too much glare, but they didn’t sound itchy. I’ve also heard ESS DACs I thought sounded great. The DACs I’ve liked have been ESS, Rohm, Cirrus-Logic, Burr-Brown, or FPGA delta-sigma DACs like the PS Audio DirectStream I’m using now.
“Itchy” is hard to explain and most other people don’t hear it. I’ve compared it to how for some people cilantro tastes like soap and for others it doesn’t. It’s something bothersome in treble, like it’s randomly just a tiny bit spikey like it itches you. If you don’t hear it, be glad.
I wanted to give r2r a go before making a step up in my gear but I haven’t convinced myself that taking a chance on $750 entry-level or $1500 mid-level r2r is worth the risk.
I have no complaints with any ds dac I’ve used so it’s just a matter of not wanting to miss a discovery of something different.
That’s the polar opposite of my experience. I finally gave up on delta/sigma DACs (after my 3rd or 4th) due to consistent “digititis” (edgy glare in upper mids/low treble, growing worse wth increasing volume). 1 multibit and 5 NOS DACs later, I have yet to hear anything like what you call “itchy” from any of them.
However, I have heard impedance mismatches a few times, so check the output impedance of your DAC’s output to make sure it’s 1/10th or less of the input impedance of the next component in the chain. But even that tends to present as something different from what you report, so I’m kind of confused by what’s happening to you.
It just occurred to me to ask where you’re getting the signal that feeds the DAC? Sometimes wonky USB cables or input chips can affect the sound of a given DAC. I never use USB straight in to any DAC, haven’t done so for the past 10 years or so. I use either a SPDIF converter (which outputs digital coax) or DDCs (which output multiple standards other than USB), and get better sound for it.
The dac I tried had usb-c input rather than usb-b so I used a different usb cable.
Seems hard to imagine that a cable could take a dac from sounding good to sounding broken, but you never know.
It was a dac/amp so there shouldn’t be impedance issues with the internal amp. I had the same issue with an external amp so that would seem to point to the dac.
The experience was certainly unexpected and I have no explanation, but all we can do is find the gear that sounds right.
The issue with SPDIF is one cannot take advantage of the higher sample rates, such as 352/384, or 705/768 Khz. I found USB to work well once I changed out my computer to a recent vintage Dell with a powerful CPU and 32 GB of memory.
Also, I use TIDAL for streaming. The sound quality got a LOT better when I upgraded the modem to 1GB.
Regarding DAC’s, the Topping D900 1 bit DAC sounds very impressive to me. I had a PS Audio DSD MK1 and Chord Hugo TT2.
I prefer the Topping D900 to either one of the above listed DACs.
I know the 24/192 limit of SPDIF is a problem for some, but it works for me. I have no DSD files. I do have a limited number of higher resolution files (24/96 or 24/192) and they play exactly as intended on various DACs via the DDC’s SPDIF output.
My experience with oversampling is perhaps more limited than some. One of my first DACs was one that oversampled everything to a very high level (at that time). I tired of that because the sound was subtly worse than the same signal sans oversampling.