Yup, born and raised. Sound Investments closed a while back. It was a husband and wife who owned it. The story is that she passed away and Brian started having health issue. They were both really overweight. When he decided to sell of the inventory, a few of his employees allegedly stole a bunch of stuff. He had a small room with used stuff, there would be classic Mac and Marantz sitting next to mainstream crap, but he always had some unusual, interesting gear in there. He was the main designer for Nobis, all tube gear, the bottom of the line amp was based on a Dynaco 70. When Nobis shut down he changed the name of the equipment to Signature Technologies. I sold of my Nobis stuff, as he was the only one who could easily repair it.
I believe in trusting your ears, but doing comparisons when possible. I was running a Benchmark Dac2 HGC as my dac, I bought it because I wanted DSD. Well, a good friend loaned me his Lindeman 825 and once again, next level. The Benchmark is now taken over preamp duties in the bedroom, retiring a Tara Labs tube preamp.
There are a lot of dacs that give you filter options, I think the Mytek does, it is also MQA. I believe they offer a trial period.
A lesson that I have learned, the hard way, is to buy from companies that aren't going to shutdown, because they are one person operations. I have some Camelot gear, and luckily he is still around, but it is not that well known. I have a nice Camelot Arthur V3 24/192 that needs it's coaxial input repaired. Nice dac, but wouldn't be an easy sale.
I might be interested in your group, send me a PM and I'll give you my email. We can talk about it. I have a nice system in a dumpy house. Got to go, the Packer game is coming on. Do or die, next time we talk, it will be go Pack, or we'll get them next year;-)
