HELP: is Monarchy Audio DAC a good idea?

Thanks for Phild's response. I never thought of matching input/output issue before! From Platsolos and Sean's reply it looks like Monarchy 18B is ok in terms of directly driving power amps.

OK, I will go with 18B.

Interestingly, Monarchy Audio company is right in the neigherhood of where I work in South San Francisco! I can almost see their building from my office. A couple weeks ago I went to their office and briefly talked to their chief engineer C. C. Poon and auditioned the 18M. Frankly speaking I can't tell it sounds good or bad since my ears are NOT well trained (yet). But the build quality is obviously excellent! I trust all the user reviews and the advices from you guys. (plus it is on sale for $299 new!)

Again, big thanks to Sean, Phild, Platsolos, Tacs, Billhansen !!!!!! You guys are cool.

Abe

I would auditon a Monarchy DIP at the same time. I have a monarchy 22 DAC which I drive from the SPDIF output of my Marantz CD67se. The Monarchy DACs do not reclock the input to remove jitter, so when I added the DAC to my CD player there was not much improvement (since the marantz players have quite poor jitter measurements, and the jitter is really the limiting effect on sound quality). However adding the DIP between the CD67 and the 22DAC really improved the clarity and imaging. IF you can do an audition USING YOUR EXISTING DVD player then you might want to try adding the DIP.

As an added bonus the DIP will convert toslink to SPDIF (RCA) to drive the DAC.

Bear in mind that if you audition this (non-reclocking) DAC using an expensive transport then it will likely sound much worse when you take it home and drive with your DVD player due to the jitter on the output of the DVD. The performance gap may be significantly closed by using a DIP. I would strongly suggest auditioning using your DVD player.

I used to be really skeptical of "tweaks" like the DIP, but not any more.

Seandtaylor99:

Thanks for the tip. I am still skeptical about this jitter and DIP thing. I am an electrical/computer engineer and haven't been 100% convinced technically yet. Still searching for 'truth' and probable will convert soon :-)

Abe

Think about how the waveform output of an D/A convertor will be distorted if the sampling rate is not consistent. Amplitude distortion, phase distortion. I too was skeptical, but after I heard the difference I thought about it a little more and it does make sense.
Also check out
http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/papers/jitter.pdf
which explains it better than I ever could.

You can not go wrong with CC Poon's products, "high end,low cost". Just audition his 22C DAC with line stage, and order one.