Last week I was sifting through some storage boxes of CDs and I came across an Arcam irDAC (given to me a few years ago but never used), so decided to slot it in to my system.
I’ve got three sources going in - Bluesound Vault 2i, Marantz SA8005 & Cambridge Azur 751 - and during the last few days I’ve become slowly accustomed to and impressed by its ability.
I’ve had a fair few external DACs (mostly Chords - Mojo, Qutest, QBD76, and briefly an nDAC) - all sold on) and I wasn’t planning to bother with another, but this Arcam is great. Obviously, I can’t remember the previous ones well enough to compare, but it’s certainly enhanced the Bluesound and Cambridge, less so the Marantz.
I used to have an IRDac and really liked it. Great value. I used to run my then owned Node 2i through it and it was very good. I put an old Arcam Alpha CD through it too. Had a reasonable headphone section too. Moved it on when I sold the Node and bought my ND5XS2. I now use this as a transport through my Technics amp.
Keep hold of the Arcam !
I’ve handed my one down to my son to go with his 5Si combo + laptop for streaming. It’s a great sounding DAC and i throughly enjoyed my time with it streaming Hi-Res files from my laptop via a USB jitterbug filter.