Tranquility DAC

I have the SE. It is smooth, smooth with good detail. The treble performance is exceptional, one of the few that replicates the decay of cymbals, chimes, triangles properly like a good analogue system. It is NOS design so it tends to sound more natural and meaty in the midrange. More tube like than most tube DACs with oversampling delta sigma DACs I know of. It won't have the hyper detail of most newer DACs out there. So if you have a dark sounding system to begin with, it may not be to your liking. If you have a relatively neutral or bright system, the SE can be a godsend. The major difference between SE and regular Tranquility is a larger power supply so bass, dynamics and to a lesser extent imaging/soundstaging and detail is improved. I have a four box tube DAC that costs over $6000 and is more neutral (depending on tube selection) than the SE. Actually my tube DAC beats the SE in almost all audiophile criteria, except for the treble performance. However, sometimes I miss the liquidity of the SE's midrange. If you listen to a lot of vocals, I think you will be very pleased.

Thanks for the comments....I have an all Ayre system with Vandersteen 5A speakers. The system is actually very neutral.

There is a new affordable upgrade to the output section that is suppose to significantly increase the sound quality of the SE. I will be sending it off to dB Audiolabs soon. Go to Audiocircle.com and look at my review of a AQVOX USB power supply I use with my Tranquility. It was a night and day improvement for about $170. You can get the free home trial and see if you like the SE. I think you will like it better than Ayre. I know of a guy here on Audiogon who replaced his Ayre DAC with the Tranq SE.