Best Dac with USB input for $1,000 or less

No_Regrets - what is the rest of your setup like (i.e. solid state amps, etc.?). Are you looking for detail, or to corrale digital and its tendency towards being bright? Do you prefer upsampling? There's too many options to just throw out a general question.

The Havana is a great DAC. With a tube'd preamp, the right set of ICs and a good power cord it could be just what you're looking for. If the damn thing had a built in analog preamp I wouldn't have sold my Havana last year. My setup is all tube and on the warm side with a Rogue Stereo 90 and a pair of Living Voice speakers. I settled on the 2009 TADAC with built in preamp for now, but most of the dirty work is being done by an Empirical Audio Turbo-3 and some pricey digital cabling.

For under a grand with nothing upstream addressing the USB jitter, you'll have a tough time finding very clean sound. Probably Benchmark would be your best option since it's under $1k used and deals with USB fairly well. It's very detailed in sound though (I used to own one). The Havana doesn't sound very good via USB compared to a clean SPDIF fed to it via it's RCA input.

Solid state dacs sound very different from tubed. I've owned 3 solid state DACs (all over $1k on the used market) and two tubed DACs (both well UNDER $1k on the used market). I'd take the simple tube DACs every time if given a choice but it's all down to preference.

Sorry, as the others have said, the Digilink III from PS Audio may do the trick too for USB under $1k, but some have reviewed it and compared it to the Benchmark DAC1 (analytical/detailed sound).

OK...I'll shut up now...

05-31-10: Mb9061
Sorry, as the others have said, the Digilink III from PS Audio may do the trick too for USB under $1k, but some have reviewed it and compared it to the Benchmark DAC1 (analytical/detailed sound).

I'm not a Benchmark fan and have listened pretty extensively to that DAC having owned a USB version and borrowed the previous version. I can tell you from my perspective I would have never thought to compare the DLIII with the Benchmark sound - they do not remind me of each other at all. I find the DLIII to be more natural sounding, not at all sterile or strident and very engaging. The Benchmark would always grate on me, especially in the upper frequencies...but overall it always sounded to me rather artificial and squeeky clean, and yes, sterile. I've heard it sound good in other systems at shows, but not in mine nor my friends. Anyway, I can't imagine what similarities it shares with the the DLIII in terms of sound qualities. Just my .02 cents.

Decware ZDAC-1 ??

Haven't heard this since it's just out since April but it looks interesting. Personally, I would need higher voltage, balanced output.

I don't know if it's the tube that is the thing that makes me like it or not? Probably I guess. I have here on hand a Bryston DAP-1 DAC and I have been comparing extensively against the Havana. I really want to like the Bryston better. It has extra inputs that I am looking for. At first swap you'd think heck yeah the Bryston is clearly better even smoother than the Havana but there is something going on here that my finger starts to look for the skip to the next song button with the Bryston where as I'm more inclined to enjoy the whole song with the Havana. The Paradisea is the same way not the most spectacular but something very natural engaging about it. Personally I think even the Paradisea sounds better than the 3500 Wavelength Cosecant V2 and that uses tubes as well.