DAC's ?

Musical Fidelity offers a very affordable unit called the V-DAC. It's also quite small - a plus if you are space- limited as I am. Another Audiogon member highly recommends Beresford's TC 7520. Good luck.

I have the Rotel 855 & it's a decent player, having the TDA1541A. I tried it with a DAC but the digital out was bad, which made the next move easy. I replaced the analog out jacks with much better quality pieces. There wasn't enough room for the new RCA's, so I used the hole where the digital out jack was for the left out. If you take a look at the construction & materials of the stock RCA's, you'll see why this should be done.

I also cut off the power cord & attached a male IEC jack so I could use a better powercord. I usually install an IEC jack but was too lazy. I'll get around to it soon.

I was using this as an interim player but with these simple mods, I've decided it's good enough for now.

I will just leave the 855 the way it is. It was a dirt cheap find, and super clean, so just another toy. From what I am seeing, with some patience, and some timing, I can get a very nice newer CDP for not much more then many of the DAC's I am seeing for sale. I am not in a position to spend $$$$ on this stuff. And I never would if I was. But thanks for the input. I noticed a couple of Musical Fidelity Units that sold on here for what I thought were pretty reasonable prices. I did see this which was cheap enough to play with, http://cgi.ebay.com/Mini-HIFI-SPDIF-OPTICAL-DAC-PCM1793-DIR9001-OPA2134_W0QQitemZ280424676642QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item414a9cfd22.

I got mine for free & it benefited from a 1 hour upgrade using parts I already had.

I see you already found the ebay stuff, as that is what I was going to recommend next.

I would suggest checking out the archives not only here but on other audio sites to see what you can come up with. Doing your homework will yield the best results.

Perprtual 3A or Musical Fidelity A3-24.Both sound great, are fairly recent and can be had for less than $400.My favorite cheap/old DAC was the Soundstream DAC 1.They were designed in conjunction with Krell Digital and still sound good today!