A DAC that crushes price vs. performance ratio


I felt strongly that I wanted to inform the Gon members about a new DAC that ranks with the very best on the market regarding performance, but costs around $2,000.00.  The Lab12 DAC1 SE was compared to three reference level DACS that retail for over $12.000.00 in my review for hometheaterreview.com and was at least on the same level sonicly, if not better.  This DAC from Greece is not just "good for the money" but competes with virtually anything on the market regardless of price!

For all the details about the Lab12 DAC1 SE performance and what other DACS it was compared to take a look at the review.  If you are shopping/looking for a new digital front end to drive your system, you owe it to yourself to check this DAC out, unless you like to spend tons of more $ without getting better performance.
teajay
Wow! My dealer won't let me purchase any big item until I demo it at home in my own system. The last to items were the $6000 Luxman CL38U-SE tube preamp and just three weeks ago the RME ADI-2 Dac. Purchased both. He shocks a lot of customers by offering home demo's. No charge.
Post removed 
If you are just looking for a dac that measure flat you can get a Topping dac for a couple hundred bucks new . If you want a dac that boosts frequencies there are dozens of " Audiophile" dacs on the market to choose from . Unfortunately you will have to try them all to see what frequency boosts go good with your system . I prefer to go neutral on the dac and go from there as far as adding colorations I prefer .
I don’t understand all the pushback regarding the use of a DAC chip simply because it’s inexpensive. It’s not like Redbook playback warrants the use of expensive DAC chips to justify a DAC purchasing decision.  
A chip doesn't need to be expensive to be good, and if it wasn't good, I don't think that the designer at Lab 12 would have gone to all of the bother to design an entire DAC around it.