Used MF Trivista 21 or Benchmark Dac1?

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.

Has anybody here compared the MF trivista 21 the to the PS Audio Digital Link III?

Is a stock unit of the MF Trivista 21 acceptable on its own? How long can the tubes last before they need to be replaced? How many tubes are there inside the Trivista 21 and are these special tubes? Lastly, will a stock unit of the Trivista 21 add a bit of refinement with more open silky highs and lush midrange to a Krell KPS-30i CDP? Thanks.

Trivista 21 is a dac, so you need a transport; other than that, yes it's far more than acceptable as stock. It has 4 nuvistor tubes which reportedly last 100,000 hours! IOW, no you'll never need to replace them. They are pretty cheap anyway. I'd guess that it would improve your Krell, as your seek. I wouldn't say it strikes me as "lush", though. Cheers,
Spencer