Success Rolling Opamps in EE Minimax DAC

Most interesting, Doug... which characteristics of the EE DAC's sound do you feel were changed by the swap of the opamps?

Doug, you have my nomination for the audiophile "tease of the year" award for 2011 (so far).

Have you ever considered writing for Stereophile?

;)

Doug, As you know there are two pairs of opamps in the EE DAC: Two NE5532 dual opamps for I/V (current to voltage) for tube and solid state; and two NE5534 single opamps for solid state output only.

Operating the EE DAC with the tube stage engaged bypasses the single opamps' circuit.

I generally prefer operating the DAC in solid state mode and found that rolling a variety of quality (read "expensive") tubes didn't have nearly the beneficial effect as did switching to your LME497X0 opamps.

I'm with Mfsoa on the OPA2107 opamps for the dual slots on the EE DAC. They get along really well with the LME49710 single opamps described in Doug's review. Perhaps even a tad better than the LME49720 dual described in the same review.

BTW, Doug, how long until you disclose the identities of the custom opamps with which you were so enamored?

Will these be available through commercial sources?