To Jeff Fritz,
It’s Neil from Everest Audio, a long-time dealer in Regina, SK, Canada.
I just read your latest article on SoundStage! Ultra and found it quite interesting. Two of your candidates for a new DAC are ones that we use in our demo systems daily, the Hegel HD30 and the T+A DAC 8 DSD. Excellent pieces. However, if you don’t mind, I’d like to address one area that in my opinion would be a large improvement for you. I also have used an Oppo BDP-103 in the past, and while certainly a fine piece feeding coax to one of these DACs, it can be easily outperformed. That also goes for the MacBook Pro. After the BDP-103, my next move up was the Bluesound Node 2 and I preferred it in terms of sound quality for Tidal streaming as well as accessing files on my NAS. However, the Bluesound Node 2 still easily takes a back seat to my current Melco N1A/2 digital music library feeding USB to an excellent DAC. The Oppo or the MacBook just won’t touch the Melco in terms of Tidal or digital file playback. Other customers of mine are in complete agreement as well. I haven’t heard this quality of digital playback in any of our systems until we got Melco. Now, I’m not here to just play up the Melco, but just letting you know that, in my opinion, you’re leaving a lot of performance on the table by staying with the Oppo and MacBook. With either of these DACs, the Melco N1A/2 and a high-quality USB cable such as the GutWire USBe-1, you’re still well below your $10k USD limit. The Melco also gives 4TB total storage or 2X2TB of Raid 1 storage.
There are a number of alternatives to Melco out there that will also give you a step up in performance as well, but Melco is one of the leaders right now in performance for the money. If you want more info, you can check it out on our site.
Keep up the great work. I’ve been a fan of SoundStage! for many years now.
Best regards,
Neil Gelowitz
Everest Audio
Canada
