Closest DAC to Vinyl Sound?

I have not Daverz. I hope to hear one soon as I have read lots of good things about them. Until I do, the Neko remains my favorite.

Your question is an oxymoron, digital is digital, analogue is analogue.

Oxymoron?

You gotta love this site!

_

Oxymoron, you know, two things that are mutually contradictory. Famous examples : jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, sex worker.

There are external DACs that sound sort of hi-fi, drawing attention to their wonderful sound, and there are others that stand aside and let the music play. I like the second kind and you can get them at different price points.

The cheapest I've found goes for 50 bucks on eBay, a Chinese-made unit branded Muse with four TDA1543 chips wired in parallel. Up the scale a bit might be the Valab TDA1543 DAC at $200, but I haven't heard it yet. Another one I like a lot, for more money, is the Apogee Mini-DAC. In fact any Apogee converter I've heard has sounded great to me.

One key to getting good sound with an external DAC is the length of the digital interconnect. In every system I've tested, a 1.5m cable sounded better than a shorter one.

My point was that the question Hayraz raised was not an oxymoron. Poor grammar, regardless of the venue is…well, still poor grammar.

Thanks anyway Tobias, I know you meant well...!

Once I got the Mhdt Havana hooked up to my Cary 308, I lost my preference for vinyl over cd sound. The vinyl rig is a Rega P25 , Soundsmith'ed Clearaudio Wood MM playing through a MAC C220. My vinyl is mostly Jazz, cds' are classical and other.