Best Dac/Transport Under 50,000

Dodson 218 with CEC TL-1X transport modded by Richard Kern, and Kharma Grand Reference, PAD Dominus or Nordost Valhalla digital cable, preferably AES/EBU. This will match the best vinyl has to offer without the hassle of vinyl, and cost considerably less than $50K.

One man's humble opinion after 35 years at this mania.

Neal

You might be interested in the Ensemble Dichrono Hi-Dac and Dirondo Transport. I audtioned numerous digital high-end pieces,you could look at a review on the Ensemble gear posted here on the GON to see what I listened to, but choose the Ensemble pieces because they sounded the best in my system.If you get both pieces along with the Ensemble Isolink Duo Power Conditioner which improves the sonics by about another 15 to 20%, add the cost of a reference digital cable, the power cords(Total of four) the cost is right around $24,000.00, expensive but way under 50 grand.I hope you would choose to audtion these pieces Roy, I'm not saying there the "Best" in the world but are at the cutting edge of what red book digital has to offer. Good luck with your audtioning.

I would seriously examine the dCS setup using the Verdi Transport, Purcell Upsampler, and Elgar DAC...this setup will even take redbook CD and convert to DSD/SACD type output...closest to analogue that IMHO exists....price tag for system roughly 30K give or take...........

I find the Reimyo CDP-777 absolutly outstanding.I highly recommend this cd red book player.

If you were able to take a vote, my guess is that more people on this website would choose the Meitner DAC and transport as being the best for redbook CD playback than they would any other CD player or DAC/transport combo.

You may not ultimately choose Meitner, but I think it is fair to say that your search would be incomplete if you do not seriously investigate the Meitner gear. The price is +/-US$17,000 and the distributor is Audiogon user Jtinn.

PS - I do not own Meitner.