dac advice

Happynick, I am in Kalamazoo. If I am heading over to the Detroit area in the next few weeks, I'll get in touch with you and could try to bring some stuff over for you to try. I'm not selling anything, but it may at least give you a chance to hear some differences.

Don't rule out the Minimax, did you read into it that since I didn't come out and say I like it or "it blows everything away" to mean I don't like it or that it doesn't meet your criteria of "musical". This is the point Happynick, you are being influenced by preferences of what others have said without knowing what they have heard or their priorities. Believe me, you aren't getting SOTA performance at this price point, of this I am certain but the price for really good sound is coming down. Then again there are features. Some offer more than others, how important is that to you and what features are primarily important? There are many recent threads on just this particular subject, check the archives. Cheap good sounding DAC's are a dime a dozen. I will say this at 1K the Minimax Plus performance is quite good even extraordinary in certain parameters that are very important to me and reminicent of what I hear in analog playback and live music. I can say I hear other things in the W4S that I really appreciate as well, things that the Minimax Plus doesn't do as well and then of course the Havana, not as much detail as either of the other two but a completely nonfatiguing musicality and most compelling with small scale music. You didn't state musical preferences. Some of the NOS DACs might be just what you are looking for, who knows? Did you gain anything from this or are you looking for absolutes? Use your reasoning and your ears, there is no other way my friend.

I should ad that I listen to a lot of Rock , flamenco,acoustic guitar , love good vocals,really anything but classical,and I did have a msb link 3 a long time ago that malfunctioned and got rid of it, also had a AudioMirror Dac 2,not good enough, want smoother more analoge sound,want the music to sound real and engaging . Yes the minimax sounds good from what I hear, so does ps link3,the monarchy m24 sounds like it will do the trick but only at the used price,perhaps at $1600 it is worth it and I should save up that is double what I wanted to spend so cannot say as of now, Nick

Hi Happynick,

I'm in the same boat as you're in. I also have an Audio Mirror DAC. I like it but I'm going to buy a Squeezebox Touch that plays 24/96 files and the Audio Mirror won't do that. Here is an interesting one that I ran across on this forum.

http://schiit.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=0&products_id=7

There's an UltraFi iRoc DAC available on Audiogon right now that is below the price range you mention and is truly superb:

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?dgtlconv&1323011730&/Ultra-Fi-iRoc-USB-DAC

:)listening,

Ed