will
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Lot's of good ideas here. Thinking of Manny's thought about keeping your computer for a reference front end sound as you expand the rest makes some sense to me. But on the other hand, this idea led me to want to say everything matters, as JBZen suggested. And a great amp and speakers are important, but we can easily hobble them with a less than optimal room setup, dirty unstable power, cables.... and first in line, a less than stellar front end. Afterall, the best amps and speakers can be amazing, but if the revelation is not there in the front end, in this case a computer and DAC setup, the speakers and amp can only convey what they receive.... Leading also to the efficacy of decent power and cables.
The Geshelli DAC looks intersting. Not familiar with it or reviews, I have no idea how it sounds, and the price is low but that may not be a problem. I wonder if it is assembled in the US rather than "made" here at that price though...not that this matters to sound either necessarily. And Caintuck open baffle speakers are notably inexpensive for what they do, so I would not rule out that DAC because of lack of high cost. Where I am trying to point though, is that if it is not there in the front end, and the cables take away from and/or color the sound, we really don't know what the rest is capable of.
And I know from long experience that buying something because someone else likes it, or likes the specs, is only part of the story... it is how it all goes together (parts, design and system/room) than makes the sound, and good specs only reflect part of that. Also, clearly how good something sounds is relative to where we started as well as personal tastes. Some folks will like slightly colored, less resolving DACs thinking they are more "musical," in part in how they artfully mask resolution as a means to reduce parts and design costs. And some of us need a clean representation of all that is there on a recording, a front end also artfully designed with good parts and parts synergy so that the DAC is musical because of higher resolution and high quality naturally musical parts causing this. This can get wildly costly, or be done within relative value, but is part of why higher end "value" front ends sell.
In my case, the latter has been my goal... smooth, balanced, and fully resolving representation of all that is there on the recording. The subtle harmonic information and finest detail and space that come with this imply the "final frontier" for ultimate sound as far as I can tell. All that nuanced information can't show if the front end is masked, and if the nuanced stuff is masked, everything else very likely is too.
So in my experiments, balanced in all areas, musically portrayed subtle information is what makes it "real" sounding, while revealing that the more difficult information to retrieve probably still exists throughout. No doubt, with all the choices and audio heads out there, a server/DAC can seem/sound great without that, but with it, I find the possibility for a truer deep musical experience is higher.
Just changing the old Mac OS on my highly tuned up Mac Mini that I use for my hard drive server, to a stripped down version, tuned by sound only for audio and by folks with really good listening skills, made a pretty profound difference here. Another example, I did some testing with a friend of many relatively low cost HDMI cables for the I2S connection between my modded Singxer SU-1 digital to digital convertor and DAC (the Singxer is between computer and DAC and refines the computer "signal'), and they all sounded different, with some notably more balanced and resolving.
I agree with others here that it will be amazing to step up your sound in the ways you have researched, that it will be revelatory, especially once you get it all tuned in your room. Just offering more things to consider as you go forward. There are always good values out there. But also, as most of us have found, we can waste a lot of money trying to save money in this vast audio realm, and I think it pays to consider everything as part of a whole, and look for value with as little compromise in each area as possible.
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