Help Choosing DAC

Mabonn - 2X bigger.

David12 - do you have acoustic treatments in your room? Are your speakers optimally positioned and toed?

You should be getting pinpoint imaging, soundstage well outside your speakers and 20-30 feet behind them. If you dog jumps and looks around when the music comes on, you know you have it. If you can go into the adjacent room and it sounds like a live concert coming from the other room, you have it. Otherwise, not.

It takes some patience and tweaking to get even the best systems to be dynamic and live sounding, and most of all, resolving.

If you are using an active preamp, all bets are off. You probably will not hear these differences.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

An example of a Dac with pre is the Burson conductor, it have 3 gain settings + lots if inputs for PC users. (USb/coax) a solid unit.

Hi- Thank you for all the info. I will look into a DAC that will allow me to go straight to the amp without my preamp in between.

Benchmark DAC1 HDR

World class DAC with preamp functionality and high quality headphone amp.

The Dspeaker Antimode Dual Core 2.0 ($1200.00) is a preamp with a built in dac and room correction. You will need an outboard device for streaming, but the D/C does have a USB input. Match the USB input with an IFi IUSB ($200.00) and run the D/C with a 12v linear or 12v battery power supply and you will have a very good sounding system.

Good luck

http://www.dspeaker.com/

http://ifi-audio.com/en/iUSB.html