Low Cost DACs

I’ve read owners reviews who compared the Modi 3 and Topping D50, and they preferred the Modi. The Topping stuff can be too sharp sounding, and not enough body or depth.

I’ve got the Modi and it does benefit from breaking in.  It’s a great sounding little dac, even playing my iPhone music on iTunes.

When you get 40 to 50 hours on the Modi, it'll be much closer to the final sound.  Oh, I should ask what kind of RCA cables you have on the Modi.  In my experience anything that is fine strand copper I don't care for.  It may seem counter intuitive, but cables based on solid core individually insulated copper are truer to the signal.  

Something like Audioquest Forest or Golden Gate, or Morrow Audio MA2 RCA cables should help.

Sounds like you have the cable issue well in hand then.  Have you mentioned what your amp and speakers are?

In my headphone rig I find that the Modi is brighter than the Modi Multibit, but not unpleasantly so. But in some rigs others might find it doesn’t suit their tastes.  Everybody has their own preferences, after all, I’m sure you can find something you like at the $99 level.

I was referring to the Modi 3, now I see I didn’t actually mention that!  

I usually have my Modi 3 in a stack with the Vali 2 on top.  It's not a lot of weight, so I can't really say if it's been a help.  What I do know is that any dac I've got sound mediore when plugged into my avr.  They are sound much better with the Vali 2 and my Grados.

I think it's because the AVR has too many compromises to the audio quality, and perhaps the preamp circuitry was one of the compromises.  I run the AVR in direct mode, which apparently doesn't process the signal in any way.  It doesn't even extract anything to feed the subwoofer.  

The dacs also sound much better in the 2 channel rig with a proper pre.