My six favourite DACs in 2023

Whenever I am asked about the best loudspeakers, amplifiers or DACs, I always reply with “Best for whom?”. We all have different needs, different tastes, different financial circumstances and – this is often overlooked – different priorities when spending our disposable income. So in selecting some of the “best” DACs that I’ve experienced in the past five years, I reframed them as favourites. Of course, my favourites might not be your favourites!

In this video, I run through six of my favourite DACs in 2023. And six means that this list, by definition, is not exhaustive. My selections are based on wanting to provide options at a range of price points and because we will be talking about only half a dozen DACs (and not one) the video is a surface skim and not a deep dive. More importantly, the DACs discussed in this video a) I have reviewed before and b) I continue to use them — which means that all of the b-roll is freshly shot by Olaf. And a word of advice: make sure you watch the video all the way to the very end.

🎥 Camera: John Darko / Olaf von Voss
🎬 Editor: John Darko
🌈 Colour: Olaf von Voss
🕺🏻 Motion GFX: John Darko
💰 Ad segment: Jana Dagdagan

🎵 Song IDs? Playlists of all music heard in this video – and other videos – can be found on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/johndarko

👉 Further information…

Topping D10s video review
📺 https://darko.audio/2020/11/topping-d10s-video-review/

Chord Mojo 2 video ‘review’
📺 https://darko.audio/2022/12/the-chord-mojo-2-is-2022s-best-dac-and-heres-why/

Denafrips Ares II video review
📺 https://darko.audio/2021/06/denafrips-ares-ii-video-review/

Chord Hugo 2 video review
📺 https://darko.audio/2020/04/chord-2go-hugo-2-video-review/

Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 video review
📺 https://darko.audio/2023/05/lyngdorf-tdai-3400-cd-2-video-review/

Mola Mola Tambaqui video review
📺 https://darko.audio/2020/08/mola-mola-tambaqui-video-review/

Room treatment by Vicoustic
📖 https://vicoustic.com/

👉 Shopping…

Topping D10s
🛒 https://amzn.to/44UKr1v