What DAC to use with a Sony XA7ES

Have you considered that your speakers or speaker placement may be to blame? At the level of sound quality of your unit, it's exceedingly hard to improve upon...

Just a suggestion, but you should definately look into NOS DACs, they are currently all the rage, and many prefer them over oversampling designs.

You can also get a NOS DAC at a fraction of the price of an oversampler.

Once you decide whether to upsample of not, you'll have a better starting point.

If this hobby were easy, it wouldn't be as much fun!

Good Luck

I've heard your player. It's a very nice unit. I didn't find the qualities you mentioned though.
Anyway, if you want a mid priced dac, look into Bel canto DAC2 or the newer DAC3. But I would suggest looking at your interconnects and speaker cables first, before spending on the dac, because I beleive your player is excellent. The cables could be your problem. Which IC and speaker cables are you using?.....unless you're not open to other suggestions and have your mind made up on getting an outboard D-to-A.

Audphile 1,
I am using Signal Cable for my speaker cables and Acoustic Zen Matric Ref. MKll rca's. for interconnects. In the last couple days I have been wondering if it's not the speaker cables.