1K dac

Hi Customoco, I just received my Squeezebox Touch this very afternoon and am looking forward to trying it out later with my HK990 integrated amp, which has an inbuilt DAC section.

Before getting this amp, I'd drawn up a shortlist of SPDIF DACs to do exactly what you're intending.

I'd throw these out there in your price range as they seemed well-engineered and good amount of positive feedback on the web:

Audio GD NFB-1 or NFB8 (dual Wolfson chips, discrete output)
Audiolab 8200CDQ (Sabre DAC, Preamp, CDP, async USB, class A output, extensive power regulation)
Bel Canto DAC 1.5 (I used to have a Bel Canto DAC 2 I liked)
Eastern Electric Minimax Plus (upgraded version of the unit lots of people have been raving about)

I'd probably have gone for the Audiolab as it seems a digital swiss-army knife, and was designed by John Westlake of Pink Triangle and Dominik Pleko, who is a super smart guy who once modded my soundcard many, many years ago :)
- they also designed the DAC sections of the Peachtree gear

Good luck with your search!

hi
thanks to you all for your help.

does anyone know the dac(s) compare to a red wine audio isabellina?

I think that you should look into a Scott Nixon Tube DAC any other model that he offers. These are all non-oversampling DACs, just FYI
http://www.scott-nixon.com/

Having owned some pretty good digital equipment and DACs (Esoteric, Wadia, DCS stack, Levinson, EMM Labs), I have a few DACs in this price range and below that I can recommend:

Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista = about $850 I think
Kora Hermes = about $750 I think currently

These units may not have the "latest" chip-set, but they blow out the current "hot chipset dacs" in sound quality in my experience. They have much better power supplies and analog output stages.

I have listened to several of the "highly promoted" $1K - $2K DACs with the "latest and greatest" chipsets and have been unimpressed from an overall perspective (Obviously I have not heard them all). In fact, I would hazard to guess that with a lot of these "newest chipset" DACs you won't be able to tell a difference in a double blind test vs. just running your Logitech Duet or Touch direct!

But if you buy smart, you can easily bring in a few DACs and test for yourself. You should be able to turn them at no or vitually no cost to you.

I have a Burson 160D for sale. Like Rex44 said, if you can find one used it would be nice......