what is the best, least costly DAC...?

Kbarkamian - V-DAC is ANYTHING but dull and lifeless sounding. It is very transparent, with excellent resolution and soundstaging.

If you found it dull sounding, than it may be one of two things:
- your DAC was faulty
- your system was voiced around old Theta gear, which is known to be very bright and brittle sounding. I know Thetas very well, since I owned a dosen of their dacs: Cobalt, Prime II/IIa, Basic II/III/IIIa and Gen V/Va/Va balanced.

Here is an excelent review from hifi critic:

http://rapidshare.com/#!download|266|422349120|MF_V-DAC_HiFi_Critic.pdf|9181

and German AUDIO:

http://www.taurus-high-end.de/infomaterial/cambridgeaudio/test/test_dacmagic_audio0109.pdf

used Vinyl

For the most part the chips used in all DACs are insanely cheap, a company like MF that has a skilled engineering team and low manufacturing costs can leverage those to make an excellent dac that retails for very little money.

I heard the V-DAC in a shop with the Mac and BAT systems I talked about earlier. Those systems are sonically different than what I own, but I've heard them a million times. Maybe when I can afford one of them, I'll buy one. I've never heard either sound dull and lifeless, until then. We tried all inputs including USB fed FLAC files.

My home system was built around a Rega Apollo. The Cobalt was bought used from a dealer as a stop-gap. My system is a Bryston B60 and Audio Physic Yara Evolution bookshelves. They're a very revealing combo. I feed the Theta Cobalt with an Apple TV using Apple Lossless files.

The V-DAC sounded the same at home. It sounded a bit smoother and fuller than the Cobalt, but that's about it. It sounded a little better using the coax out from the Apollo with a Tara Prizm cable (discontinued), but so does the Cobalt. USB didn't fare any better.

I really wanted to like the V-DAC. Who wouldn't want a $300 DAC to get them off the merry go round? If I didn't want it to work out for me, I wouldn't have taken it home. Every system I tried it in had the same end result - uninvolving sound that had no emotion or soul to my ears. It may have done the technical stuff well, but that doesn't mean much to me if it doesn't carry a tune.

To bring it back full circle, if the OP has a nodded Rega Saturn, I think he's looking for some groove in his gear. Basically the flat-earth philosophy as the Naim, Linn, and Rega guys have. If it doesn't swing, nothing else it does really matters.

Everyone has different priorities. Everyone listens for what they like in their system. If it doesn't boogie to my ears, I don't care what else it does.

Just my experience with it. That was my only intent.

I had the V-dac and the Tri-Vista SACD player in the past. Like some other MF gear I came across they don't seem to do the PRAT right and didn't get me fully involved. I guess some people are more sensitive to this aspect of musical enjoyment than others.

That said the V-dac is good value in what they done right, I actually thought the tonality of this little conception better some other more expensive MF gear.

I have not heard the RAM mod Rega Saturn, but I own the RAM fully modified Oppo player with cyrogenic treatment. Suffice to say the V-dac holds no comparison.