DACs with volume controls

Geez, one day and all these responses, you guys are great. You've given me stuff to start my research, and I love researching!

Does anyone else agree with Stevegolf1? That if I'm looking to save money by "skipping" a component it might be better to go with a CD player with a volume control? Hmmmm...thinking out loud. My eventual upgrade path then would be via a superior DAC as opposed to a superior Transport with my original idea.

Which upgrade path would probably be more fruitful? Improving the DAC with a long standing transport, or improving the transport with a long standing DAC?

You could build a bottlehead foreplay preamp for $150 and get a sony sacd 333es or 555es player for under a grand from some of the dealers on the net or good guys in california. I think they are selling the 333es for $400. With the money you save, you could get yourself alot of sacd's and regular cd's and I bet it will sound as good or better than any 2k dacs out there except maybe for the EVS dac.

Audio Alchemy DDE v3.0's had volume controls, if I remember right. I see a DTI32 and DDE3.0 for sale here on audiogon for under a grand.

The DDE3.0 is AA's best DAC and the DTI32 is AA's best jitter box. Too bad AA went out of business. They made some good inexpensive stuff.

EVS Millenium DAC II has optional volume controls. ($100 option)I saw it mentioned in another thread, see:

http://audiogo5.iserver.net/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1002111835&read&3&4&

Word has it it will be upgradable to future DVD-A and SACD, though two channel only. bnc coax, aes/ebu. i2s is coming. I'm surprised this DAC can't walk on water, the way some people review it.

http://www.tweakaudio.com/
http://www.tweakaudio.com/Millennium%20DAC.html

http://www.audioreview.com/reviews/DAC/product_77953.shtml
http://www.audioreview.com/reviews/DAC/product_45605.shtml

Thanks again guys. EVS with volume controls....hmmmm....more than a little intriguing.