Best $200-$500 DAC

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.

Hi. I found out that the SilverStone EB01 is powered by the computer, and as that would degrade the audio, I wouldn't be interested in it. I was seriously thinking about the Sqeezebox, but I have Windows Media Center and think that buying it would be redundant as WMC offers a very good interface for playing songs from the songlist, etc., although I would still need an external dac. So far I have narrowed the field to the Scott Nixon USB tubedac, Audio Horizons TD 3.0, or Empirical Audio's USB offerings. I noticed that he is going to offer his own dac sometime later this year, I may wait for that. (Empirical Audio)

PROREC, Audio Horizons would be one dac to consider, their products have had very high praise. They will also construct a special interconnect for connecting from your computer to their dac, for a modest fee. Personally, I love the looks of their dac best, but, of course, the sound is 1st priority. Sandra

I recently purchased a Musical Fidelity A3.24 from a fellow Audiogon'r just above your price range. It's connected to a Roku Soundbridge and MF A3 integrated and provdes great results.

i would highly recommend the pacific valve ah dac lite, especially at its price point. i have one connected via mini toslink to an apple airport express wireless to my powerbook and apple lossless files. bought it as an interim until i decide which higher end dac to purchase and i think it's very musical, not harsh at all. i can't recall significant performance decrease from my former cary 303/200 cdp though i never did side by side testing.