Nickodavidoff,
You are going to get some good suggestions here, but I would urge caution
when considering high priced DACs. "High priced" is clearly a
relative term, but I think anytime you are going to spend as much as you
might on a car, caution is in order.
My ears and experience indicate that spending more than $5k on a DAC
in 2014 is a risky proposition if you want to maximize bang for the buck.
Consider this: John Atkinson of Stereophile recently wrote that he was
"hard pressed" to hear much difference between hi-res files on
the latest $3500 Marantz streaming DAC and the $43,000 MSB flagship
DAC. He wrote that it was "uncomfortably close."
He is not the first respected reviewer to acknowledge the hair splitting
differences between DACs once you reach the $4k summit. I do not mean
to suggest here that there are *no* differences, just that the differences get
smaller and smaller the higher up you go and are often no more than a
matter of personal taste and system synergy. There is also the pace of
change to consider. I predict that there will be DACs unveiled in the
coming months that will embarrass some very high priced competitors: it's
the nature of computer advancement.
If anyone here writes that one respected DAC "literally blows
away" some other well-reviewed DAC, take that view with a very, very
large grain of sea salt.
People will have very justifiable preferences and you may find a DAC that
satisfies those tastes, but you really need to share what sort of
"sound" you like in a system. For example, some DACs are
highly revealing, while some are quite romantic in their presentation of
music. Other designers strive for neutrality. What do you prefer?
