A New Twist on the Usual DAC Question

For value: (oldie but damn goodie): MacCormack DAC-1 (upgraded by SMC)

I have recently been using the Classe DAC-1 with a great deal of pleasure. It is the best DAC I have ever owned, and while I am sure that there are many out there that are better, I think that it will have a place in my system for awhile. It has balanced, two coax and one optical digital input.

You can absolutly do SACD and have a dac, but you need extra cables...

Get a decent but not rediculously expensive CDP with SACD capability and run the analog into your Aux input, and Simply get a Sweet DAC which will hold its value for redbook, and you can very simply put the analog cables from the DAC right into your CD input, and still use the same CD input with the same set of cables to just change the input on the DAC when you need to run a hard drive computer source or whatever... This is the most versitile, and capable way to get it all and not loose a ton if you decide to sell something..

If you invest in a single player and upgrade I can tell you that all these big dog players are going to probably drop to about half value again in the next 2 years, because MASS storage redbook media is rapidly taking over and quite frankly some of the software and media units being sold today can compete with sending 1's and Zero's just as good or better(even in the jitter domain) Vs. some of the top transports today..

Of course this would give you capability to switch between the redbook and SACD layer on a hybrid on the fly and you might find that a Good dac will sound better than the decent SACD player. But truth is important :)

The Benchmark Dac is a lot of bang for the buck $975. New. It has XLR, BNC, Toslink, RCA inputs. Outputs are XLR bal., or RCA. also has a very nice headphone amp for 2 built in. It can be used with a preamp or without as it has a gain dial, I find it better this way in my system.