Best $200-$500 DAC

Thank you for the suggestions. It looks like it probably makes sense to spend an extra $100-$200 and go with a higher-quality DAC. In the $500-$700 range, do any other DAC's outperform the MF or Bel Canto?

I would love to know as well. I heard the Pacific Valve modded version of the Lite is good...

Has anybody tried the USB SilverStone EB01 dac? It looks fairly nice and is only $99. It's $89 at
www.sundialmicro.com (look under store specials-about halfway down). I was looking into USB dacs and noticed this, but I have no idea what it sounds like and was wondering if any others have tried it. I can't imagine it sounding too great at this price, but you never know. Sandra

Sandra,

(hopefully we're not hihacking the thread) I just about gave up on my search for a Waveterminal U24 and decided to order one of these Silverstones from Newegg.com. Lo and behold one of the U24's came up on Ebay 2 days after I ordered the EB01. All I cans say is that the EB01 is a "cute" little box but as far as sound goes I was not impressed. I experienced a serious drop in gain from my PC to my preamp and also had trouble getting the ASIO4All with Foobar to work properly with it. The U24 arrived a day later and all bets were off - the Waveterminal is just too good. I sent back the Silverstone before I really attempted to troubleshoot my setup, but for what it's worth right out of the box I was not impressed - cost me about $25 in shipping and restocking fees to find out.

If you can find a McCormack dac 1 deluxe in the $300-400 range, you will find it will produce music very faithfully. Mine is mated to a lector preamp and sounds wonderful. So far I have not switched even though I've heard many dacs which are far more costly.