Used MF Trivista 21 or Benchmark Dac1?

I owned the TriVista with the full Parts Connexion mods - it was a fabulous piece. Heirloom quality - hard to imagine anything ever wearing out.

Even the tubes - urban legend has it (backed in this case by fact) that MF actually has enough tubes in reserve to replace any that might fail for years to come.

Please understand that these are not tubes like 6SN7s or 300Bs. You don't see em and you can't change them. They do not create, and the TriVista does not have a tubey sound in the usual sense of the phrase.

The big variable will be the quality of the signal and the cable you connect to it.

I ultimately sold mine, with considerable regrets I might add, because I wanted to get SPDIF out of the chain and go direct with USB.

Trivista is less digital sounding than Benchmark but Bel Canto Dac3 is nice step further of Trivista.

Can any of you explain the lights in the footers of the Trivista21? I've seen them red at startup, then amber or blue when playing music. What's the amber vs blue indicate?

Blue is fully warmed up. The other colors indicate how close it is to full warm up. I was recently auditioning it in a friends system and he insisted on listening right away. He began by telling me how bad it was and as it warmed up he liked it better and better and almost bought himself. There are tubes available from other sources than MF, I believe, there are for my NuVista M3.

"Can any of you explain the lights in the footers of the Trivista21? I've seen them red at startup, then amber or blue when playing music. What's the amber vs blue indicate? "

The red is for start up, amber for o.k. listen to, and blue for best sounding. I had the Trivista 21 awhile back and thought that it was very nice sounding DAC and nicer sounding than the Benchmark DAC USB. Maybe a bit tubey to some listener but it is smoother and more enjoyable than the Benchmark. The Benchmark to my ears was a bit bright and analytical but might have better details than the Trivista DAC. However, my Exemplar 2900 walked all over the Trivisa 21 DAC + Sony SCD-777ES as a transport in redbook playback.