Mid-priced warm sounding DAC?

There was a thread here recently that was removed regarding the similarities between the Poth and Audio Mirror. The owner of Audio Mirror posted a response similar to what was said on the head-fi thread. I have two of the Audio Mirror units, one that has been modified by TRL. In comparison to the Poth, to the eye they seem very similar, with the obvious exception that the Audio Mirror uses the teflon caps (which according to TRL are very good). The owner of Audio Mirror has told me of other changes that he made to the circuit, but I'm not an engineer so I don't know for sure. However, one way to know for sure is to compare both of them side by side, which will also allow you to A/B for sound quality comparison. I'm ordering a Poth for that precise purpose. To my knowledge I have heard of no direct comparisons between the two products from anyone that owns both units or has heard them together.

Im all ears,

I plan on doing a review of the of the TRL vs. stock Audio Mirror. I will eventually post my impressions of the Poth vs. stock Audio Mirror as well. It may be awhile, as I'm in the process of also comparing numerous phono stages, but it will eventually be done.

The Audio Mirror has been one of my best investments. I actually did not pay full price for both units, which makes it even better. I am using a TRL modified Alesis ML9600 (CD, CDR, HD) as a transort. When I first hooked up the Audio Mirror I could tell that it was a very special unit, after about 200 hours of burn in time I was floored by how good this unit sounded. Very close to analog. Before deciding which DAC to buy I had to decide which philosophy to support. I decided that the non-upsampling/filterless designs produced by Audio Note and Sakura (47 Labs) were what I was after. I did compare the AM to Audio Note (2 models), 47 Labs, Benchmark, Bel Canto, and a couple others. With the exception of the Audio Note 2.1x, the Audio Mirror prevailed.

The Audio Mirror's sound has a liquid texture to it. The highs are well detailed and the bass suprisingly strong and clean. This is very evident on some jazz CDs I have where you can actually hear the fretting from the bass player. On rock CDs the bass drum is clearly identifiable, not muffled. The soundstage is wide, but could be wider. You may not miss the difference unless you compared the unit to one costing 3 - 4 times more. Even then it may be an inconsequential difference. If I have to fault the unit I would say the mids are somewhat distorted when really hammered, and of course while seductive, the exterior is actually cheezy in my opinion.

TRL found the unit very musical and with their modifications they have been able to address the mid range distortion. They also applied some other proprietary changes to the unit which they say has improved it greatly. I am about to embark on the A/B testing to find out just how much improvement there is. RAM is doing some mods to this unit as well, but I was not too impressed with the changes they were making.