DACs: Burmester vs. Meitner vs. dcs

I have a good friend who has the means to own anything and pretty much has over the last few years. He has owned the Meitner and Phillips combo but recently sold it after hearing the new Teac Esoteric 70 series in a very resolving system in which they were side by side. He was also able to hear the new UX1 which will be released soon for sale and will obtain that for SACD although he also preferred the Exemplar/ Denon player for SACD. He has owned, Zanden, Weiss, Burmester, DCS, Ensemble, and Levinson and several "custom built units". He feels that the Esoterics are the only ones that approach his superb vinyl set up although at a price. I have to mention my bias since I own the Exemplar and would love to have the Teacs.

There's so much hype about EMM labs that I have get my two cets in here. I live in Seattle, Blue Light Audio is in Portland (EMM's distributor) and I have heard the EMM labs gear in several systems for extended periods. I don't think the EMM labs is clearly superior. It's great, but you have to talk about it in context. I've heard the Burmester 001 run direct to an amp and it was fantastic. Sounded as good on cd as the EMM labs did on SACD. And that sold on Audiogon last week for $8000 total. Put an active pre-amp in there and I bet the Burmester would get sloppy. I am selling(my axe to grind) a DCS Delius/Purcell combo that I ran directly into my aleph 1.2.
I can't afford to keep it anymore...but that system run directly into the right amp sounds better than the EMM labs gear did on cd. I believe this is because with EMM you need a pre-amp. I heard the EMM labs DAC 6 with the big BAT pre-amp. That's $3000-$5000 more in a set up that already sells for $8000 used. With DCS or a modified Wadia 861 etc. you can have impeccable cd playback for under $6000.00 total on the used market. I think Meitner sees this and that is why they are coming out with the DCC 2 which gives you a built in pre-amp which is actually the output of the dac instead of having a dac out-put routed to a pre-amp circuit. There I feel better.

sm2727, i also live in Seattle.....own the EMM labs gear.....and use into my Placette passive. i have had the dCS gear in my room and to my ears the Meitner simply goes to another level (the dCS running nude and the Meitner into the Placette). the BAT VK-51SE (which i have had in my room) will restrict ultimate performance with the EMM labs gear compared to the Placette (and the Placette is $1000 retail).

the Burmester has outstanding Redbook performance.....and i have only heard the 001 once.....but i have heard the top Burmeister combo a few times. the Burmeister does equal the EMM labs in detail.....but the EMM labs goes to another level of filling the soundstage and really openning up the music compared to my perception of the big Burmeister. also, the way in which the 16/44 is upconverted to dsd on the EMM labs gives redbook a much more 'non digital' feel compared to the Burmeister. the firewire interface on the dCS combo is inherently full of jitter and results in a certain 'digital' feel here too. i am splitting hairs here a little but at these perfomance heights those little hairs are important.

any of this gear is excellent.....but there is no doubt that the EMM labs is at least equal to these others on redbook and absolutely smokes anything on sacd. and it is cheap to run the EMM labs thru the Placette passive to get all the performance any digital meduim is currently capable of.

Mike, when will you get a real preamp and stop futzing with the Placette?

Gladstone- lol!