Closest DAC to Vinyl Sound?


I love my vinyl, but sometimes it's a pain to keep flipping sides. I also have a lot of digital music (WAV, FLAC and MP3) that doesn't sound half bad through my Soundblaster X FI Titanium Fatality. But I'm wondering, is there a better way to enjoy digital? How would an external DAC stack up? Can anyone recommend a DAC that has that analog sound, or is it wishful thinking? Associated equipment includes Sound Valves VTP 101, Aragon 2004 and Large Advent Speakers. I also have an Adcom GCD 750 cd player that can accept a coax input.
heyraz
The Neko Audio D100 is absolutely effortless in its presentation. The best digital I've heard for under $2k, and outclassed the Cambridge 840C which was a few hundreds pricier.
I have not Daverz. I hope to hear one soon as I have read lots of good things about them. Until I do, the Neko remains my favorite.
Your question is an oxymoron, digital is digital, analogue is analogue.


Oxymoron?

You gotta love this site!

_
Oxymoron, you know, two things that are mutually contradictory. Famous examples : jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, sex worker.

There are external DACs that sound sort of hi-fi, drawing attention to their wonderful sound, and there are others that stand aside and let the music play. I like the second kind and you can get them at different price points.

The cheapest I've found goes for 50 bucks on eBay, a Chinese-made unit branded Muse with four TDA1543 chips wired in parallel. Up the scale a bit might be the Valab TDA1543 DAC at $200, but I haven't heard it yet. Another one I like a lot, for more money, is the Apogee Mini-DAC. In fact any Apogee converter I've heard has sounded great to me.

One key to getting good sound with an external DAC is the length of the digital interconnect. In every system I've tested, a 1.5m cable sounded better than a shorter one.