I have basically the same comments to make as LAK about the Mapleshade PC's which were tinny sounding in my setup. They did not work on my player and DAC at all and one placed on my 300B SET amp made very little difference than a cheap PC, but was not bright sounding with this use either. My 300B amp however has shown itself to be pretty much immune to being effected by various PC's in the past. Though this sounds very negative other people that I have discussed the MS PC's with have had just the opposite results (having replaced much more expensive [5x the cost] PC's with the Mapleshades) and because of this I would still recommend that you audition one in your system. LAK and myself have similar (though not identical by any means) systems in that we use flea and fly watt tube amps that both produce a "lot" of detail. Mine also has some type of light weight power supply that I am not familiar with and it is different than the ones on any of the other tube amps that I have used in the past. Itried a Stealth HAC PC and had similar though not as extreme as results in that it also sounded somewhat bright to me on my digital equipment. It does however match very well indeed with another solid state amp that I sometimes use. So synergy is always at work when going for the sound that you like. My favorite inexpensive PC (because it does not seem to change, much anyway, the balance of my system while it improves the sound) has been the Harmonic Tech Pro 11 PC. I have two BMI Whales that are being shipped today that I will not be able to thouroughly test until my tube amp is back from the shop (following breaking it in again as it may have cap and resistor upgrades done to it), but will at that time be able to A/B the HT and Stealth PC's to what is said by its users to be a much better PC. This will be interesting, for me anyway, even if it does end up being apples and oranges. I use the Mapleshade Double Helix digital IC and hope to try their speaker cable as well, so have nothing against Mapleshade. I love the digital IC and a buddy of mine (with a nicer system than mine) highly recommends the speaker cable. There are a few other very popular PC's that sell used in and around your price range, Synergistic, JPS and Gutwire come to mind, but I have not tried them myself.
