I use the ekianthus dac with the audiomeca mephisto II and find it to be delilghtful. It is very open and musical. I must confess I have not used it with any other dacs but think it is probably the way to go if you think about the fact that the transport was designed with the ekianthus in mind (or vice versa). I would certainly consider this to be your reference point though there may be better out there. As an aside the asthetics would be very good (important to my wife). This made a substantial improvement in almost every disc. With regards to hooking the two up I have switched from the gigaflux from ensemble to the hms and found the change to be enormous. Other suggestions are to make sure you have the transport well isolated (i use reverse rollerblocks and a svelte shelf - but have tried the darumas and found them to be a very good and economical alternative). Jtinn also recommended leaving the lid open and this certainly seems to help, particularly with less than optimal discs. Hope this is of some help. If you have any questions drop a note
gary
