Best $200-$500 DAC

I think you can get a Musical Fidelity A3 24 used for slightly above your price range. I personally use a Bel Canto DAC2 from my soundcard with great results; you could get one off Audiogon for around $700. I think $200-$500 is a tough price range and that if you're willing to put in just $200 more the increase in quality of the DAC you'd be able to get would be substantial.

You could get a Scott Nixon USB DAC for under $500, and stream directly out of your computers USB port.

Also you could look at something like this:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue24/firestone_spitfire.htm

Hi, A MSB Link Dac 3 sells used for some where in that range and is upgradable with an upsample option as well as an outboard power supply.They can be factory upgraded to full nelson verson.Modwright as well as others do upgrade mods.These units are good sounding rigs and can be upgraded as money allows.And as another post states: Musical Fidelity A3 24 for a few more Bens($100 bills)is a fine unit.I hope this helps. Gixerman

A cambridge. It's a bargain being that its balanced. I remember buying one new for only a few hundred bucks.

Get a Lite DAC-ah and have it modified by Doug Jesse at RAM. Right around $500 and an outstanding value.

Thank you for the suggestions. It looks like it probably makes sense to spend an extra $100-$200 and go with a higher-quality DAC. In the $500-$700 range, do any other DAC's outperform the MF or Bel Canto?

I would love to know as well. I heard the Pacific Valve modded version of the Lite is good...

Has anybody tried the USB SilverStone EB01 dac? It looks fairly nice and is only $99. It's $89 at
www.sundialmicro.com (look under store specials-about halfway down). I was looking into USB dacs and noticed this, but I have no idea what it sounds like and was wondering if any others have tried it. I can't imagine it sounding too great at this price, but you never know. Sandra

Sandra,

(hopefully we're not hihacking the thread) I just about gave up on my search for a Waveterminal U24 and decided to order one of these Silverstones from Newegg.com. Lo and behold one of the U24's came up on Ebay 2 days after I ordered the EB01. All I cans say is that the EB01 is a "cute" little box but as far as sound goes I was not impressed. I experienced a serious drop in gain from my PC to my preamp and also had trouble getting the ASIO4All with Foobar to work properly with it. The U24 arrived a day later and all bets were off - the Waveterminal is just too good. I sent back the Silverstone before I really attempted to troubleshoot my setup, but for what it's worth right out of the box I was not impressed - cost me about $25 in shipping and restocking fees to find out.

If you can find a McCormack dac 1 deluxe in the $300-400 range, you will find it will produce music very faithfully. Mine is mated to a lector preamp and sounds wonderful. So far I have not switched even though I've heard many dacs which are far more costly.

Hi. I found out that the SilverStone EB01 is powered by the computer, and as that would degrade the audio, I wouldn't be interested in it. I was seriously thinking about the Sqeezebox, but I have Windows Media Center and think that buying it would be redundant as WMC offers a very good interface for playing songs from the songlist, etc., although I would still need an external dac. So far I have narrowed the field to the Scott Nixon USB tubedac, Audio Horizons TD 3.0, or Empirical Audio's USB offerings. I noticed that he is going to offer his own dac sometime later this year, I may wait for that. (Empirical Audio)

PROREC, Audio Horizons would be one dac to consider, their products have had very high praise. They will also construct a special interconnect for connecting from your computer to their dac, for a modest fee. Personally, I love the looks of their dac best, but, of course, the sound is 1st priority. Sandra

I recently purchased a Musical Fidelity A3.24 from a fellow Audiogon'r just above your price range. It's connected to a Roku Soundbridge and MF A3 integrated and provdes great results.

i would highly recommend the pacific valve ah dac lite, especially at its price point. i have one connected via mini toslink to an apple airport express wireless to my powerbook and apple lossless files. bought it as an interim until i decide which higher end dac to purchase and i think it's very musical, not harsh at all. i can't recall significant performance decrease from my former cary 303/200 cdp though i never did side by side testing.

I think Dac-Ah is inverting - I don't want to have to rewire speakers every time I change source.

Can I safely reverse polatiry on a custom interconnect without shorting our anything? Using a TAD-150 tubed preamp. Ir is there a comparable non-OS non-inverting DAC out there?

Zhaolu DAC 2.0

... hard to spell but easy to afford.

From china, to find out more, go to http://www.headfi.org and look in the source components thead to read what all the fuss is about.

for the music