As, maybe even more important, is your transport. No matter which DAC, it will only be as good as the laser /transport reading/sending signal. Consider soomething like a CEC belt-drive transport/cd player. Later add a hot dac then you've have a world-class digital front end. Northstar has really nice sounding dac that is capable of 24/192 playback.
used high-end DAC or affordable newer model?
I have an old adcom 575 cd player that i will be using as a transport and i was wondering if it would be better to do with a newer dac like the MSB link III or Channel Islands VDA-1- or should i go used high-end such as the EAD dsp 9000 pro now on ebay- it seems that the older high end dac's can be had for the same money as the newer affordable models but what are the sonic differences?