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

it is my observation that the ee dac is not tube sensitive. while changes will occur when subsituting different tubes, i believe the chnages are small and not significant.

My experience with using an Oppo 80 as a transport, as well as my MacMini>Hiface, showed the Oppo to be a decent transport except the EE didn't like the optical out from the Oppo. I experienced drop-outs. The EE liked the coaxial. I don't know if the Oppo has a lot of jitter that the EE can't handle, or a problem with the optical inputs on the EE, or the Oppo is defective. Doesn't matter to me since I switched the Mac to BNC and used the coax input for the Oppo. Now I am using a Sony SACD player with optical into the EE with no dropouts. So, I am blaming the Oppo for the mismatch, not the EE. I moved from a PS Audio DLIII to the EE and am ecstatic. I have now had it for 2 months and every day I listen to it, I smile! Wonderful sound.

I also had some problem with the optical input to the EE DAC. From the optical output either an Apple Airport (a later jitter-prone model) and/or a Macbook. Don't recall the specifics of which was problematic or if it was both.