Eastern Electric's new tube DAC using ESS Sabre??

I've had the pleasure to own the EE DAC for the last seven weeks and find it to be an exceptional piece. Most impressive are its dynamics. The specs claim a dynamic range of 129dB and listening certainly bears this out.

The backplane is flexible and includes BNC, AES and USB along with the traditional coax and SPDIF inputs. Opamps are socketed should you choose to roll in different ones. It has a true tube output stage, not just a buffer, that can be toggled in or out. I prefer the solid state to the tube option but its nice to have a choice.

The box is substantial with solid heft when picked up and is attractive on the rack.

Highly recommended

Joaco, the 90/95dB figures that you refer to are the signal to noise ratio, not the dynamic range, so nothing is "lost" between the DAC and the outputs.

I keep the volume control set to maximum and will eventually consider bypassing it as I'm very happy letting a Wyred4Sound STP-SE preamp handle it.

The EE is spec'd at 129dB of Dynamic Range and listening clearly seems to indicate this is correct. Most dynamic DAC ever to grace my rack.

Paulsax... I agree with you on the relative value of specs, but were you to compare a device with say 129dB of dynamic range to one <100 dB, the result would be most startlingly apparent, all other things being equal, of course.

Bob, How does the Cary 303/300 sound as a transport to the EE DAC as compared to Touch?

My reason for asking is that when I compared my CD transport to my Logitech networked source through the EE DAC, the CDP clearly produced superior sound (to my ear).