Dac magic plus

Thanks for the information Dmgoodman. Much appreciated. It appears that headphone outs on most DACs don't really have much in them in comparison to good dedicated headphone amps such as the Burson.

Cheers.

@Dmgoodman - well, the Burson is an $800 stand-alone headphone amp, so I'm not really surprised. I got my Dacmagic Plus delivered yesterday. However, I'm still waiting for my Pangea USB cable and a replacement cable for my Sennheisers (my 7 year old somehow damaged the old one). In the meantime, I hooked it up briefly to with the cheapo USB cable that came with the DM+ into my Rotel amp. It sounded pretty good, but not that smooth. However, I'll reserve judgment until it's broken in and I'm using a proper cable.

Update - After a week with the DM+, I am sending it back today. I'm not even sure if I let it burn in long enough, but I just got the sense that I wasn't going to be 100% happy with it. I thought it was a bit bright at the top and I noticed too much sibilance (sp?) for my liking. Perhaps this would go away with further use, and perhaps it's my system, but I just ordered a Wadia 121, so we'll soon find out!

[By the way, it was hooked up in the following arrangement:
MacBook running Audirvana -> Pangea Pure Silver USB Cable -> Dacmagic+ -> Kimber Kable Hero XLR cables -> Rotel RB-991 power amp -> Hovland Ninelines speaker cables -> Meadowlark Kestrel Hotrods] Also tried it with my Sennheiser HD-600s plugged directly into the headphone jack.

Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I didn't think it sounded noticeably better than my tiny portable Dacport plugged into a preamp with a mini-RCA adapter.

Not surprized. Try the V-dac. More organic sound in my system.

Ssglx - I already ordered the Wadia 121.