Good evening,interested in moving to a DAC

how does a tube output stage effect the equation?was looking at a sony 9100eswith mods by modwright,i believe they call them platinum signature truthmod,thanks to all who have answered my thread,thanks again robin a little more money,4300.00,would this be money well spent?

take a look at April Music's Stello DACs and Trasnporter in your range

$4300 will get you a squeezebox touch and a $4k dac. you can build a dedicated squeezebox server for under $400 with more than enough storage for you entire collection ripped losslessly. good luck and enjoy whatever you decide to purchase.

My Audio note 2.1.x dac sounds wonderful and I feed an ipod through an Onkyo ND-S1 (takes off digital sound from an iPod/iTouch like a Wadia 170i).

The new Ayon CD-01s CD player/Dac(which has a digital in) is reportedly one of the best CD players around and has a fantastic DAC inside of it). Reviewers have compared it to being equal to vinyl from a high end setup. You can easily feed a coaxial digital signal into it from an iDock like the Wadia 170i or from a Squeezebox touch.

Dealers seem to be willing to discount around 20%+ on the list price of an Ayon CD-01s, so a Ayon CD-1s can be had for around $3,500 or a little less.

However, in my system, the iTouch through an iDock which takes digital (my Onkyo ND-S1 idock) sounded better than the Sqeezebox to me which sounded a little compressed and lost a little soundstage and seperation of instruments(although close).

By the way, the Onkyo ND-S1 is not sold in the US market but can be purchased from a seller from Japan on ebay. It is about half price of the Wadia 170i and sounds every bit as good to me. The power supply is a switching one so, it works just fine in our sockets and with our 110-120V 60hz current.