DACs With Killer Built-In Preamps

I'd take a hard look at the Empirical Audio DAC, and a lot of people seem to like the Berkeley DAC run directly into an amp as well. Best of luck.

Also look into the Aesthetic pandora. It has a preamp / VC option based on technology from their acclaimed calypso tube preamp. It is supposed to be a phenomenal DAC to boot. It is right at your pricepoint.

Boulder 1012!!!

Look for AMR DP-777.
I dropped my Pass Preamp for it.
Tube design.

I have owned the Meitner Bidat referred to in an earlier post and I now own the PSAudio MKII DAC TAS raved about a few months back. I've run both DAC's direct. One *can* achieve that last nth degree of micro detail with such a set up. But I've found that something is also also lost. I call it the "soul" of the music. I have yet to hear a DAC preamp that could match the incredibly organic and natural *sound* created when I let my Conrad Johnson CT5 preamp drive the system.

In my experience, there's just something "clinical" sounding in all the preamp-less systems I've heard. I would concur, though, that today's very best DACs going direct to amp *do* beat a less-than-stellar preamp and mediocre interconnects.

See Stereophile's latest review of the Pass Lab XP-30 for more musings about the joys of a preamp. What shouldn't be good sometimes is.