dac choice

I'm using the Monarchy M24 now and have also recently put in Siemens NOS goldpin tubes (after about 3 weeks of the stock Sylvania tubes). This DAC has surprised me and may stay in my system. I have not tried the linestage and probably won't as running it through my passive preamp is working well at this time.

While I find the build quality to be very good overall, I think the push buttons on the front have a cheezy feel to them. I also leave the blue light that illuminates the sampling rate off. The sound on the top end still appears to be ever so grainy and bright, especially versus my non-os DAC, but the Monarchy does quite a bit more things right that outweigh this very minor detail.

Actually the M24 and Lite DAC 50 (no longer in production I believe) share more in common.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue25/monarchy_m24.htm

I was a bit hesitant to try the M24, as CC Poon indicated there was a 15% restocking fee if I returned it. However, I'm glad I did. This is an excellent DAC for the money and a steal used. The new version has both the tube and solid state output so you can switch between both.