Looking for a Solidly good inexpensive DAC

If you don't need USB in:

I purchased a MSB "Full Nelson" Link-DAC III from sound4sale dot com for $500. The Full Nelson has an upgraded analog section, the upsampling board and MSB Net connections (also accepts AES/EBU digital in).

This box was a Stereophile Class A component in the day, for what that's worth.

I'm not affiliated with MSB or sound4sale, but I am a customer...

I'm quite impressed with the quality. Source device is a Roku SoundBridge M1000 via coaxial digital. The S/PDIF coax goes into a GW Labs DSP reclocker (upsampling turned off). I am feeding the Link-DAC via AES/EBU digital from the DSP. The Link-DAC does upsampling internally via an option card. Analog outs from the Link-DAC go to a Musical Fidelity X10^3 tube buffer, into the preamp.

Source files are coming from a wired ethernet connection to a Firefly server, as 320k MP3 or on-the-fly transcoded FLAC -> WAV. You can guess which sounds better. :-) I'm amazed at the quality of even 128k internet radio streams (Radio Paradise, SOMA FM). Very smooth, very open sound at low to moderate volume levels.

Other source components are a Musical Fidelity A308 CD (I'm using the internal DAC on the MF CD). Amp is a McIntosh MA6100, recently refurbed by Audio Classics Ltd. in NY.

Speakers vary, but in the current "background music" role for this rig, I'm using a set of Paradigm Atom v.3s. I also have Studio 100 v.3s and a set of Studio 20 v.3s. Wife acceptance factor for the Studio 100s in the family room is low, so they generally live in the basement in another system.

Anyway, nice access to a classic DAC, "brand new" for a quarter of the original price.

Cheers,

-don

Thanks Jim for the terrific review! You should be a reviewer for one of the on line magazines.

Gmood1

Thanks much... there was far more to say about each, but there's the gist of it... and so much for budgets.

Still there are yet more worth checking out for sure... for now however my systems performance is again improved upon.

Very nice thread - I guess I should put my impressions down on paper as well (as soon as I have some more time). Over the last few months I have been comparing the following DACs:

- Lavry DA10
- Wavelength Brick v2
- Benchmark DAC1 USB
- MHDT Paradisea (just arrived today)

Also some DACs I compared directly:
- Musical Fidelity A3 24/192 (modded)
- Monarchy M24
- Museatex Bitstream
- Slimdevices Transporter

Without going into details, I would say the modded Musical Fidelity and Benchmark USB were my favorites so far. More on the a comparsion and in particular the Paradisea soon.

The Channel Islands Audio VDA 2 DAC is an awesome DAC for the money ($599), I can not imagine better sound for the $$$. I can listen to it for hours on end.