Borderpatrol Dac SE

I'm not sure what the disconnect is. The BP is utterly life changing for a digital front end. For the last 20 years most dacs have relatively similar shortcomings and sonic signatures due the fact of using basically the same ICs for digital filtering and OS. Then came delta sigma, with everyone falling into the crack pipe like oversampling hamster wheel. (It sounds better so I over-sample, so it sounds better, so I over-sample more, so it...)  It didn't matter if the unit was $500 or $5000 they all sounded... digital.

Compared to any other DAC under $5k the Border Patrol is the first to provide actual textured nuanced bass instead of the relentless granulated single note thumping sound that has me running to the laundry room thinking someone put the cat in the dryer.

I improved my Border Patrol SE by installing a Valvo EZ80 tube.  The BP tube has a significant effect its treble.  I would suggest tube tube rolling.

I'm new to my BP dac purchase. I installed a SR purple fuse and a mini watt ez80 tube. I'm the 2nd owner of this dac. It has only the digital coaxial input. I like it because it is a straight up musical dac. Simple hook up and has a very natural life like sound quality to it. The BP dac is replacing a Eastern Electric mini max dac that died on me. The BP dac is much more natural sounding than the EE dac was. The BP dac for me is a dac that gets out of the way of the music. 

BP Se-i here.

A few comments : 

1) 100 to 150 hours (break-in) is a must (it is horrible out the box)

2) A good power cable is very important (mostly to address the bass issue)

3) Ditto for a good usb cable

The BP doesn’t sound impressive at first glance like other dacs, it simply sounds right / natural and I realized that ‘sounding right’ is probably more important than the last bit of resolution (at least for me). If you want to listen to your system, it is probably not the best Dac but if you want to listen music…

I rolled in a Bugle Boy Holland ez80 rectifier tube. This definitely woke up my BP dac. I read that different rectifier tubes won't make much difference in sound quality. That is a false statement.