"Aesthetically pleasing" DAC???

Look at the Chord 64DAC. Nothing looks like it, and definitely high end

such as MBL, Goldmund or Metronome DACs.
Or if you really want to *show off*, Zanden looks deliciously
ostentatious.

Or you can go completely opposite route.
Get Bel Canto's DAC 2 and hide it behind your transport.

Your wify will never know there is a new gear in the house. :-)

also consider the audiomeca mephisto. truely gorgeous and wonderful sounding. extremely smooth but not inexpensive. I have pictures on my system

Who was that Billy Crystal character..."Better to LOOK good than to FEEL (SOUND in this case) good!" I get much the same guff from my wife (though I'm no fan of your typical metal boxes that pass for components either) and as a result most of my system is on a rack in the closet in our living room. 6 meter long RCA's connect my pre to the dual mono SET amps (tolerable appearence with cages), and short speaker leads to the Klipsch LaScala's. It all works great and the front end and pre are even better insulated from sound and vibration in our lathe&plaster house. Since a DAC is pretty important I wouldn't buy one for looks alone, though I'm sure there are good ones that look great too. The Chord sounds promising...don't know your budget though. The Bel Canto is fairly small, though plain. You can always house it or camoulflage it in something more appealing to your wife. Perhaps since your wife is calling the blows here you could have her pay for it and have Josh at Electronluv build you a custom DAC. Nothing I could imagine would be more aesthetically pleasing than that! http://www.electronluv.com

MBL not only looks good, but if you can afford it, it sounds pretty darn good as well.

KF

I like the Levinson 360 DAC. Some may not prefer the
"industrial" look, though I find it attractive.

Check out the Electrocompaniet ECD-1. If you find typical Electrocompaniet equipment attractive, you'll like this one. I hear it sounds great, too, although I've never actually heard it.

Michael

the chord is a great reccomendation, absolutely beautiful and easily one of the best dacs for the money.

Hey Jax -

Josh has talked about building a DAC but hasn't got to it yet. Hopefully he'll soon have the preamp finished to go with the amps I got from him. (wait until you see this preamp...;-) The next thing I want to get him to build is a phono stage... hopefully all DHT, S&B step up and RIAA trannies, battery filaments... should be impressive if he can pull it off. He was actually talking about building a dac and phono stage into one unit.. we'll see what happens. Agreed that a dac from him would be the ultimate (in my book).

Other nice ones:

the Stax X1-T is quite nice looking, the Zanden looks pretty nice too. Or how about the Wadia 790 Powerdac? those look damn cool.

-Ed

Birdland Audio makes a great DAC and one model has a volume control.

I love the way my Kora Hermes makes music, but I gotta tell you that the faceplate looks like something from a cheap Revel model kit. I think the Chord is super neato looking, kinda like a mini hi-tech bomb.

Electrocompaniet DAC.