What is the best DAC under $500?

CONTRARY to what many people claim, differences between DACs are much smaller than what you'd gather from all of the "This DAC blew away that DAC" threads.
After hearing a DacMagic for 429 bucks go up against my Rega, EE Minimax Plus and an ARC Dac costing a small fortune, I could easily live with any of them providing there is reasonable synergy with other components. Few people really get to compare DACs in their own systems and I assure you that even the entry level stuff sounds great. Expensive amps and preamps often sound MUCH better than lesser ones, but this is just not the case with DACs.
Still, be careful with Tube DACs. I'm not hearing any advantages at all from my admittedly narrow experience with them.
I'd look at the DacMagic and Emotiva unit that was just mentioned. Both are well featured and quite capable.

Cheers,

Rob

Boy Robbob you may have just saved me a ton of cash if you feel the DacMagic sounded as good as the EE Minimax+. I was looking at the EE recently and was seriously considering getting that unit. Was the one you listened to the DacMagic Plus? I had recently read one of your threads (which became extensive) comparing the Rega and the EE Plus Dacs

Seeburk,

I'm officially calling "the emperor has no clothes" on the Minimax Plus. It's a fine DAC, but really no better than many others overall. I feel that most people don't have the chance to compare these DACs against others in a conclusive way. Listening in a showroom is a tough call to say the least. DAC's are so close in performance 95% of the time that your audition can be effected by hundreds of factors, any one of which can lead to a happy, but misguided decision.
My friend sold his Minimax Plus and switched to the Rega. Though there was an element to the tube stage of the EE we did not like, the issue was so small I did not consider the upgrade (or sidegrade!) to the Rega worth the effort of swapping. He doesn't agree.
He borrowed better tubes, went with no tube in SS mode and so on. Too much trouble (for him) when the Rega sounded closer to his turntable rig, but he admits that most people laughed when he switched between the EE and his ARC DAC. They were that close!
Now....The Dacmagic is a bit brighter with a bit more glare perhaps and the soundstage is SLIGHTLY smaller, but it produces HIGH END digital sound when mated to a Mac Mini. Depending on the system some might even find the Dacmagic better than more expensive units. It's very lively sounding and it can be tweaked to sound even better.
Let's also consider this. The reputation of these units IS effected by their availability. The harder it is to find and hear, the more likely that it gets bigger user raves. I've seen this again and again. The EE Plus is harder to hear than the Rega. The Rega is more readily available than the Dacmagic and so on. This effects the public perception of these units more than you might think. Our disappointment in the EE Minimax plus was amplified because I perceived it as more of a "audiophile" product than the Rega. It's harder to get, has a tube and so on. But the Rega was better in most absolute terms.
I have a fairly revealing system with Merlin TSM-MXr speakers and a Manley Stingray II tube amp. I can easily hear differences in PC's, cables and most sources. But DAC's show a smaller range of audible differences than any of them. As I said before, change the amp or pre and you have a huge difference, but this is not the case with good DACs, where you end up comparing apples to VERY slightly different apples! People will pay big for those differences, but I think in many cases that money could go into another part of the system and yield a far better sonic return. No doubt some will differ with me and that's fine, but make the effort to explore on your own. In the end your opinion and satisfaction will be the only thing that matters.

Cheers & happy new year!

Rob

Interesting post from Robbob. I myself wouldn't say most DACs sound all _that_ similar, but IME they certainly start to do so when I try to define the sonic differences between them. However when I'm paying attention to a musical message, my preferences seem to appear more clearly.

Having done that, I would say there are DACs which tend to preserve the music at different levels of resolution and different price levels. For example, two musical pieces of equipment at quite different parts of the price spectrum are the Muse TDA 1543 DAC available on eBay and the discontinued Stellavox ST-2. Both of these are NOS DACs, but this is a coincidence. I've heard OS DACs I thought were musical too.

Thank you very much for that post Rob!

My current and first foray into the DAC realm has been and is the HRT Music Streamer ll+. I really think it sounds great but have been wondering just how much better my system can sound. I have spent so much money on other things such as power cords, speaker cables, trasports, amplifiers etc so spending a bit more money for a DAC that will surely outperform the HRT was what i have been wondering about. I can't seem to find anyone that has owned and heard the HRT DAC that i am using, that has also listened to the DACS we are talking about. EE,Rega etc.

I don't want to go crazy with the higher end DACS but i was wondering how much of an sonic improvement could possibly be gained by stepping up the DAC ladder to DACS such as these. From your post i am starting to wonder if i should just stick with my HRT Music Streamer ll+ DAC and call it a day?

BTW and a side note...loving the Pure Music software i just auditioned and just purchased finally last night! That really brought another level of performance to the system for a minor investment IMHO