Cheap Blu Ray Player + DAC for hi fi ?

Thanks for all the replies guys! Ah Fiio - the cheap and cheerful brand I remember for all their head-fi stuff. Haven't looked at their products and lately and this looks surprising for the price.

Thanks Arni for the tip on BR audio. Does this mean that audio will not work at all via the DAC? I'm not using a 5/7.1 channel setup, just a traditional 2.0 - cuz music is a much higher priority and I don't have the space nor budget for a full fledged HT.

I'm reviewing my options right now. Budget is a bit of a constraint given how much we've spent on furniture and wallpapers etc. Haven't bought the Mac Mini actually. So if I buy brand new it's gonna be the new one, which means no CD drive. Was thinking of a Blu Ray player - cuz the mass market brands are pretty affordable right now.

I could save some money and plug in my Macbook Pro to the computer instead. But it'd be a hassle to keep plugging and unplugging everything every time I want to actually get some work done on the computer.

Yes, Blue Ray audio material will not output via the players coax and optical out, only via HDMI and analog. CDs and DVDs can, however, be played via most higer bits traditional DACs.

If you have not pulled the trigger yet, have you thought about a DAC that has a volume on it (like the Emotiva DAC they are closing out on special from their website) and going with a power amp instead?

I use this unit and found my Samsung bluray player to be a very decent transport...better than my philips CDR.

The emotiva DAC's volume control will result in loss of fidelity. They had initially promoted this as a no loss of resolution volume control, but they have since gone back and said that since the volume control is in the digital domain that you lose resolution.

My experience with the DAC is that it sounds best when the volume is set above about 65, and I use a tube buffer after it.

I have been Using a Musiland Monitor 02US, It has a built in power supply (not through USB), it has optical, spdif and USB inputs, it will out put all rates from 16/44 to 24/192 through all inputs and after burn in sounds very very good. It is noticeably better than my NAD 515BEE cd player. Be aware that if used for computer audio that it will not run MAC, has proprietary windows drivers only. This is around $150 on ebay. At $300, I would recommend the Musical Fidelity VDAC 2. I don't believe either will work with a BluRay. I would guess that if you got a cheap cd player and deadened it with lots putty or other dampening material, then ran through an optical or spdif, you would have very satisfying results. Good Luck, Tim