RankStranger Posted April 5, 2024 Posted April 5, 2024 Further Information: Story time, because this is not an ad I thought I'd be writing anytime soon but, there you go. If we were all driven by logic and reason, I guess we wouldn't be here (presumably, we'd be over at ASR instead ). When I decided last year to complicate my life yet further by replacing a perfectly good Auralic Altair streaming DAC with an Aries streaming transport, I didn’t have a specific separate DAC in mind. Rather, I planned to purchase a few promising contenders secondhand, keep the best, and sell the rest on. The first one I bought was the Bifrost 2, which I had long been very keen to try and the second one was this, Clay Gieseler's Kompakt R2R NOS. Actually, the Kompakt wasn't on my list, initially, but a friend had one he needed to move on and it seemed like it might be a better buy than the Denafrips Ares, which was to be my next pick. I decided I definitely liked the Kompakt better than the Bifrost 2 and then my "search" just... stopped. The Kompakt was doing everything I wanted a DAC to do in a completely musically satisfying way. Especially once I'd paired it with the Curious USB cable, I just wasn't that interested in hearing other DACs anymore. There must be something about Clay's sonic taste that aligns well with mine because both times I've owned one of his products, it's taken something pretty singular to prise me away from it. The first time it was a streaming DAC almost 10 x the value replacing the Klein IV (I still maintain the K4 did some things better) and this time it was actually a confluence of two things. The first was the hours that I spent in the Audio Note room at last year's hifi show, totally captivated by the music coming out of the gear in there. The second was an AN DAC1 Signature coming up in the classifieds a few weeks ago. Even thinking about purchasing the DAC1 was an objectively silly thing for me to do. I didn’t really have any spare cash with which to experiment with DACs anymore. Plus, I've just completed a new hifi rack, which was my most ambitious and challenging (not to mention expensive) woodworking project to date and the DAC1 is simply too tall to fit in it. It also means I need to completely revisit my digital cabling situation and, to add insult to injury, set my costly, high-tech streaming transport to playback my extensive collection of high-res files in lowly Redbook format. Ridiculous! Naturally, I snapped it up immediately ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I wasn't sure how it would compare with the Kompakt in terms of sound quality and the fact is, while the AN is better, it's not that much better. To be honest, I'm finding it hard to even define exactly why I like the AN better (it might be the tubes but I'm not ruling out pure sunk-cost bias) but I do. I find it fascinating how we apportion value to incremental improvements in sound quality. Is my indefinable preference worth nearly twice the value of the Kompakt? My head says, no. Given the subject of this ad, I guess, my head did not win this one. So, where does that leave us? Well, it leaves me with the task of fitting the square peg of the DAC1 into the round hole of my stereo system and it leaves you, dear reader, with the opportunity to purchase the superb Gieseler Kompakt R2R NOS DAC at less than half of its original $1500 price! Just as you have come to expect from Clay, he imbues the Kompakt with an ineffable musicality that seems to transcend mundane considerations like chip manufacturer or circuit topology. Mids flow effortlessly, bass is full and tuneful, highs are sweet and precise and oh crap I'm talking myself out of it fortitude Simon yada yada yada further information at https://www.gieseler.com.au/product-page/kompakt Shipping at the buyers cost is no problem. Following extensive research, I can strongly recommend you pair it with a Curious USB cable, which handily outperformed the half dozen other digital interconnects that I tried. You should also check out the Chord Clearway XLR interconnects I've listed because they'd be a great match for this as well. Because I'm such a mensch, I'm happy to combine shipping for multiple items to save you some cost. 2 1
Detailer Posted April 6, 2024 Posted April 6, 2024 I haven’t heard nor owned this model but having both Gieseler’s Grob and TDA1541. Simple looking yet natural and great sounding DACs! Great price and someone should grab this! GLWTS! 2
Gremrock Posted April 6, 2024 Posted April 6, 2024 4 hours ago, Detailer said: I haven’t heard nor owned this model but having both Gieseler’s Grob and TDA1541. Simple looking yet natural and great sounding DACs! Great price and someone should grab this! GLWTS! These are great, I have one too that I’ll let go soon but you can’t touch them for the money, the tda1541 is supposed to bring better bass and imaging but for 1/3 their price these are awesome 1
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