Tranquility Signature vs. Bryston BDA-1?

As an owner of the original Tranquility and having heard the Burson AH-D160 (dac with preamp) and a bunch of other dacs, I can say: Tranquility hands down, wonderful sound compared to the Burson. My two cents...

The Tranquility SE will be very hard to beat.

Hello Gents.

I'd spent over a year with the Tranquility Signature USB Dac. No doubt It was a very special Dac that, in my experience, bested a lot of more expensive Dacs. I've since moved on.

I'm now using the Ultra Fi Dac-41 which is designed by Larry Moore who also engineered and designed the Tranquility series for db Audio labs. To my ears the Dac-41 is a significant advancement for NOS Dacs and pretty much trounces the T Sig. If you've got $1295.00 put aside for a Dac upgrade, you ought to see if you can get your hands on one of these. For the sake of RSAD, I could use about any Dac I want up to around $5-6k but until I hear something better that's also a good value, I'm done.

For the T Sig. owners who'd like to stay with waht they have but would like to upgrade w/o spending too much $$$, Larry Moore at Ultra Fi can upgrade the T and T Sig by modifying the PSU and adding his Twin Reg circuit board. I've not heard it but I've come to trust Moore's work and I also know a few who have and like it a lot.

Hope my 2 cents is helpful.

Robert
RSAD

(Discalimer: While I'm not affiliated with db Audio Labs or Ultra Fi, I have become pretty good friends with Larry Moore as a result of mutual admiration for each other's work.)

HI, Eric Hider here from dB Audio Labs.

I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words regarding the Tranquility SE and its sonic capabilities. Although not officially announced, in the last year we took on a brand new design team. The engineers managed to improving the original Tranquility design. I've updated around 50 plus DACs in the field thus far. The owners have reported back with 100% positive feedback on the sonic improvements with the mods to the Tranquility. In a nutshell, expect improvements in detail extraction, dynamics (particularly in the bass region), fluidity and harmonic integrity.

I aim to help keep the current Tranquility owners off the "gotta get this year's new DAC upgrade" bandwagon and instead keep them state of the art sonically with their original Tranquility DAC for 2012...and beyond ;-)

I'd like to concur with Robert of Ridge Street Audio.

I've owned the UltraFi iRoc, listened to the UltraFi MusicStream, the Tranquility, the Tranquility SE, and now the DAC-41, and I will be receiving a modded power supply DAC-41 in a few days.

Of these DACs, the DAC-41 far and away excels in my three systems, and if you are buying your first DAC, I suggest that you go with one. One thing I'd like to note, for some reason, the DAC-41 improves over time in all aspects of audio quality: and I mean months. Why this is, I have no idea, but they do... just my experience.

:) listening,

Ed