affordable DAC for rock/metal

Undertow,.....I'm glad someone else understands what I'm trying to say. First of all, I'm a beer budget guy, so I'm pretty limited on what I can work with. It's been easiest to "synergize" my current system for certain music types, and getting acceptable results from many of my hard rock CD's has been an effort.

My previous CDP was a well regarded budget unit, and although I enjoyed how detailed and deep it sounded, it's overall balance was tilted more towards the treble, and some of my rock CD's had become painful to listen to. The last time I enjoyed these CD's was a couple years prior, when using a Theta Chroma 386 dac (I started to regret selling it).

I decided to try a couple popular DACS, and the Valab was one of them. It was decent, overall. Sounded smooth and dynamic from top to bottom, but sounded less 3d and lifelike, then what I was used to. AT one point, I popped in a rock CD, that I would be hard pressed to listen through just a single track, on my player (Linkin Park's "Meteora", and I ended up sitting through the whole CD, and listening at the highest volume level I've ever had my system at, and I really enjoyed it. I now understood why so many people say the Valab is a very easy dac to listen to, and just enjoy the music.

I ended settling on a completely different CDP, which has turned out to be a balanced compromise between musicality and critical detail, and I'm once again enjoying a wider range of not only music types, but recording/mixing qualities.

BTW, I'm using Magnepan IIc's with less then optimal room placement, so you can imagine my difficulties in "rocking the house", although I am using dual Velodyne servo subs, which greatly helps.

Rooski,

I had a pair of IIcs for a good 20 years and know their sound quite well!

Prior to my music major in university, I have been in a rock band before, don't ask, though i wasn't the only classical trained musician to be involved in rock.
This makes it tough to put together a system, I love the natural timbre and soundstage for classical and jazz music, but with rock, i like it aggressive, as i was also into sound recording, the modern rock recordings are heavily compressed in the final mixing, started in the late 80s like Motley crue, Extreme etc. then now bands like system of down and nu-metal stuff everything is so compressed from guitar to vocal. That's why DAC like havana dac(non oversampling) would sound great with classical rock, like led zepplin and rolling stone. My friend has ps audio dac(upsampling), and it does metallica really well, as with modern rock you might want to enjoy the instrument separation. This is not to say my Havana makes modern rock stuff sound bad, the kings of leon really rock with my Havana, you can really feel the vocal, or the emotion of it, if you analyse vocal as one instrument as well. And if you like the sound more alive, Havana does it very well, i love the drum snare it produces, so realistic. i highly recommend auditioning on havana and ps audio.
good luck
andy

My setup sounds a little smooth in the highs since I got the new tweeters. There's not enough 'bite'. I don't know if a DAC will make any different there.

I'm guessing I just need something that separates instruments well and is good at bringing out the initial sound of a percussion or guitar attack.

A good example is Celtic Frost's Monotheist, it has very aggressive guitars yet it's a little too smooth sounding to me.

The soundcard I'm using is real cheap, I described it to a friend as sounding like a teenager's boombox. No clarity or detail, just your average mass market sound.