Eastern Electric's new tube DAC using ESS Sabre??

The EE is spec'd at 129dB of Dynamic Range and listening clearly seems to indicate this is correct. Most dynamic DAC ever to grace my rack.

Im sure this is a fine product but the is not one of us who can hear a range of 129db, likely not even half of it.

specs are nice but dont get hung up on the them.

Paulsax... I agree with you on the relative value of specs, but were you to compare a device with say 129dB of dynamic range to one <100 dB, the result would be most startlingly apparent, all other things being equal, of course.

I too own the EE DAC and I think NJS describes it pretty well. It's nicely made and its presentation is detailed and dynamic; it responds pretty well to tube rolling too.

The other day I compared it to the Cary Xciter DAC, and these are different animals. In my set up, the midrange and upper midrange of the Cary is fleshier, which makes the EE seem a bit recessed in the mids--of course, I am not sure I would have said that before the A/B. The EE is more detailed and "faster" sounding.

I like them both, they're just different.

I am feeding these FLAC files fed by a Logitech Touch. Neither the Touch/EE nor the Touch/Cary sound as good to me as my Cary 303/300 CD player, but they're not too far off.

Bob

Bob, How does the Cary 303/300 sound as a transport to the EE DAC as compared to Touch?