Possible New DAC for Discrete Opamp Rolling

I've been using an older ( V3's, I believe they are up to V5 now) set of the Burson Op amps in my DAC. It allowed me to hold on to my ancient MSB DAC for another couple years. I'd say the Burson units have improved all aspects of the sound. most notability the sound stage, mid bass and bass. I had to mount mine on the flexible extenders, no issues. Even though its time to dump the old MSB DAC the Burson op amp's will find a new home in something else.  

glen 

glen, nice to hear from you, and you seem to know the benefit of rolling discrete opamps. I have an email sent off to Burson to see what they recommend for my EE Minimax DAC Supreme. I saw one guy put the V5 into it (dual and single), so I know that would work. I presume the V6 would work, and from the highly scientific analysis (facetious; they show a chart of descriptive factors) it seems the V6 Classic would appeal to me. 

But, I'm also talking DACs, and I'm somewhat surprised that there have been no recommendations yet. What does that mean? Aren't there any high quality DACs with swappable opamps? One should not have to go to a megabuck MSB to get to roll opamps. I sure hope that we're not down to cheap headphone combo DAC/Preamps as selection for rolling opamps.  :(

I tried the Burson V5 at one point and wasn't too terribly impressed.  However, the new V6 Vivid op amps are excellent.  Much better resolution and they sing!  However, the best opamp I think are the Sonic Imagery 994Enh (or the 992 if you need a single channel op amp).  They have the absolute best resolution and clarity, but they are huge and are very demanding on the power supply and require power supply capacitors mounted very close to the pins.  I actually have soldered 3 caps directly onto the top of the op amp itself (330uf + 100uf + 47uf + 0.1uf MKP).  If you want a clean/clear bipolar Krell type of sound, these are the best.  However, the Burson are slightly warmer but with excellent clarity if you want something towards that sound.  Burson are very compact, but even they need some good power supply caps very near the pins.

I tried the Orange discrete opamps.  They are okay I guess, but lacked resolution and clarity.  They are probably about equal to the opa627 monolitic op amps.

The Sparkos are nice, much better than any monolithic opamp, but they are soft in the highs and slightly warm in a clean/bipolar way (when you have proper power supply).  Overall excellent, but the V6 Vivid and Sonic Imagery are better.

If you can find a used L.K.S MH-DA003 DAC, that might be a good platform to do op amp rolling. 

auxinput, splendid reply, thanks! You obviously know what you are doing in regard to this subject. 

Are you indicating that the Sonic Imagery 994 Enh (or 992 single) require additional caps? i.e. That it is not recommended to use these without modification of the EE Minimax DAC Supreme? Or, are you indicating that optimal performance will not result without addition of caps? The way you described the use of the Sonic Imagery opamps it sounds like damage could result if the unit is not modified. 

I'm not sure if Sparkos Labs has changed their discrete opamps in the past several years; they appear the same. NewClassD looks revolutionized, and I have a message in to them, too.