You'll get differing opinions but since you have a tube pre amp if you like the sound you have now a tube dac will add coloration to it. I would try both one or so with tubes and without.
Get a nice clean, crisp, transparent, neutral, musical DAC... Have you done any tube rolling with your C500 Pre or ZH270 Amp? You have a lot of tubed sugar going on there... You need to demo some DACs in your system to know what sounds good to your ears/brain... I love the sound of tubes although in my system I chose a non-tubed DAC... Good luck in your search...
I can't speak for your system, but I've heard two different tube DACs in my system. [My preamp and amp are both made by Don Sachs. My speakers are Daedalus Audio Apollos.] The two DACs were a Lampizator Atlantic with volume control and my SW1X Audio Design DAC III STD. CD quality music from an Oppo 103 and/or streamed via TIDAL was used to compare them, so no DSD or high res music.
Both DACs reproduced music beautifully. There was no brightness; no overly warm midrange, acoustic instruments had that delicious 'in the room' sound that seems so hard to attain with lesser DACs.
Neither of these DACs hindered or colored the music as far as the listeners could tell. Oh. I ought to mention we compared them during a couple G2Gs, so it wasn't just my biased ears declaring MY DAC IS BEST! LOL! That said, I felt that the SW1X DAC III beat out the much more expensive Atlantic by a few hairs. The Atlantic owner preferred his over mine. [Both of us felt the Atlantic benefited from having my D Sachs Model 2 connected rather than relying on the Atlantic's volume control.] The other listeners were split more or less evenly between the two. Everyone was delighted.
Finally, my SW1X DAC replaced a dB Audio Labs Tranquility SE NOS DAC that I had been quite content with. The Tranquility sounds a little flat if I add it back in to compare against the SW1X DAC. It's taken up residence in my headphone system (to my delight).
I have no clue how either of these DACs might sound in your system. I concur with the other poster who suggested trying different tube DACs in your system in order to best determine which is the best fit for your ears and your wallet.
What streamer/DAC are you using? It would help greatly if you’d share what you’d like to see in terms of improvements and what you value most in sound reproduction.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
