Seeking Advice on NOS DAC

I believe your 1V input sensitivity means your amp/amps achieve full output power with a 1V input.

@mitch2 , that's correct; 1V at full power. Regarding the Hex (2V unbalanced), I'm sure it will be a fine match as far as impedance and amp input sensitivity.
Let me give you the back-story, I'm using a PS Audio Nuwave DSD with 2.8V output and I believe it is driving my amp into clipping (sounds like distortion thru speakers). I have a thread posted about jitter control in which several members stated that I'm experiencing clipping due to the low 1.0V input to the amp. At first I thought the harsh sound was due to jitter, but overdriving the amp makes the most sense since it only happens on loud passages, such as a crescendo and close-mic'd brass.
My amp has a nice feature, a direct input with variable gain control; but only up to 1V max. Input impedance is 100 kohms.

I have an Atma-Sphere SE preamp that I take in and out of the system, and there is the same distortion sound during loud passages.
I actually checked other SE tube amps such as Quicksilver and CJ and they have 1.0 input sens. I guess when paired with a preamp with the right amount of gain, it works well.

I have been looking for a NOS DAC with analogue VC and haven't seen a suitable one yet. As far as the Jade and the Adagio, they would be ideal, but none are listed yet in the used market.
I appreciate you keeping up with me on this thread.

Thanks @mesch . And now Schiit makes a converter.

You should check out the new tube dac on the Doge site.  It's probably not NOS, but if it's related to the Doge6 CD player topology, I'm sure it sounds warm and grainless, which is what people who are looking for NOS dacs are usually trying to achieve.  BTW, IMO, looking for a dac based on circuit topology is not the best way to go about it.  Buy for sound, not design or specs.  But that's my opinion and, from what I'm reading around here lately, I stand with a very small minority.  Good luck. 

Lowrider - not a silly question at all. Jitter will be a problem unless you have a really low jitter source, like an expensive USB converter or network renderer, costing more than the DAC.

If you plan to use sources such as a transport or a Sonos etc., a reclocker like the Synchro-Mesh will bring that sound quality up to the latest technology uber-expensive DAC’s at a low cost.

You get the best of both worlds: analog sound of NOS, plus detail, dynamics and liveness of a low-jitter source.

I used to be of the opinion that resampling does some SQ damage to the datastream that cannot be recovered, but my latest Synchro-Mesh sounds almost identical to my best Ethernet renderer, which is 5X the cost of the Synchro-Mesh. My BNC cable is recommended with it because of the fast risetimes on S/PDIF.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

lowrider57
  Seeking Advice on NOS DAC

Looking at this lowrider, this is also a R2R ladder dac you should look at for RedBook replay, not too much about it yet, but could be the new Yaggy
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/border-patrol-dac#1486831

Cheers George