The best DAC for the money

I compared the Nixon with the similar Ack! and immediately chose the Ack!. I have since compared it favorably to the EAD DSP 7000 III and with a very nice and smooth recent Van Alstine. The Ack! runs on batteries, always a major improvement, with the added advantage of no powercord to imrove upon. I've upgraded my Ack! significantly by replacing the 3.3 mF AuraCaps with Dynamicaps, a pair of 5 mF and a .01 bypass per channel. It really opened up and the bass improved big time. I use it with an EAD T1000 with a Mapleshade/Insound Zepher dig link. Extremely open yet smooth, dead silent with wonderfull dynamics; the best I've heard.

The Ack! dAck Rev 2.0 was announced yesterday as a 2nd generation design and a major iteration of the original dAck in a press release

PeAK

Check it out the Silver Eagle Audio Signature I (single-ended tube DAC- using 6X5 tube rectifiers and 6J5 in-and output tubes). I have never listened to this tube DAC since the day I started getting into this hobby and just went to CES 2005 no DAC can beat this one sonically.

There's an Entec dac for sale on Audiogon right now. Whoever buys it is going to be very happy with this rare gem.