Closest DAC to Vinyl Sound?

Oxymoron, you know, two things that are mutually contradictory. Famous examples : jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, sex worker.

There are external DACs that sound sort of hi-fi, drawing attention to their wonderful sound, and there are others that stand aside and let the music play. I like the second kind and you can get them at different price points.

The cheapest I've found goes for 50 bucks on eBay, a Chinese-made unit branded Muse with four TDA1543 chips wired in parallel. Up the scale a bit might be the Valab TDA1543 DAC at $200, but I haven't heard it yet. Another one I like a lot, for more money, is the Apogee Mini-DAC. In fact any Apogee converter I've heard has sounded great to me.

One key to getting good sound with an external DAC is the length of the digital interconnect. In every system I've tested, a 1.5m cable sounded better than a shorter one.

Soldersplatter, I hear you. I gave a four-chip TDA1543 DAC to my son after using it on my computer system for a while. I was very impressed. Fifty bucks gets music, fun-to-listen-to stuff, the same kind of fun I used to have with a tube-amplified Sears Viking LP changer when I was a kid. Fun, not a sound signature. Great stuff.