Parasound Z DAC

Hey, Hawk, sorry for the delayed response. I'm using my z dac as an outboard dac for a musical fidelity a3.2 cd player and as a dac connected a wadia 170i streaming spotify on an iphone. I must say initially I couldn't hear a difference between the mf a3.2 dac, the zdac streaming spotify or the z dac as an outboard dac to the mf a3.2. I can now hear a difference. The mf with the z dac sounds the best, followed by the wadia streaming spotify, followed by the dac in the mf. I don't know if the z dac broke in or if I just couldn't pick up on the differences initially, or both, but now my system is really sounding good. If I ever get my mf vdac ii with pangea p100 back from getting fixed, I'll compare those two dacs as well. I don't like how the v dac has no switch on it to change inputs so sometimes you have to disconnect a cable for it to pick up the signsl you want it to (LAME) and the z dac has a headphone amp, balanced outputs and a power supply that you don't have to upgrade. That new dac by teac looks interesting also...
I am happy with the z dac though. Good detail, good bass, and a nice natural organic sound. I''m getting pretty darn close to being finished compiling my system as I'm starting to finally get the sound that I was looking for :-)

B_Limo, thanks for the response. That helps a great deal.

Hey B limo,

My formal review on the Zdac has just been posted on hometheaterreview.com. I gave it a big thumbs up, rightly so. I have in house another highly regarded DAC for review that retails for around 2K which is quite good, but not better then the Zdac at $470.00 in its performance. You got to spend a lot more $ to get a significant improvement in the sonic performance then this DAC. Quite a bargain,indeed.

Thank you for the information. Looks like a great choice for poor guy like myself. Anyone compare this against the HRT Music Streamer HD, which has also been alleged as a great affordable DAC.

I recently did a back to back comparo with a musical fidelity m1 dac and preferred the z dac. The m1 might have brought out more detail because it made some recordings sound bad, but the m1 sounded thin and slower to my ear.