Cheap DAC - suggestions

M AUDIO have still not released the BETA drivers for their 24/96 and in the mean time I have to put up with my awful built in sound card. Was thinking of getting round this by selling the M audio and buying a DAC.

Was thinking of spending £100 at the most. Have seen some Hong Kong products on ebay but is this a big risk?

Was looking at the Cambridge range but they seem to go for far too much money.

Any bargains around £100?

 

Erm Beresford seems to get good press.
HERE

 

How about a bargain at £70. I have a two month old Beresford 7510 mk6 that I'm now selling. PM me if you're interested. See the classifieds section for more info.

 

£70 will also get you a Behringer SRC2496 which is pretty damn good, and you can have me modify it later on if you want to 'push the limits'.

Seriously, the stock SRC is probably the best bargain in DAC-land for £70 IMO. Especially since it can be set to re-clock the data and reduce jitter that can be an issue with computer based digital sources, and it has an ADC, upsampling, dithering (worth having IMO) and decent headphone output. Bargain

 

DPA little bit / little bit 3 / bigger bit / PDM 1.2 or 1.3, NOT the PDM2 though - all good , maintainable via Chevin Audio or Tom from dpa. Hard to beat -even now- for <100

 

I am very very confused now!

I am not intending to modify so its what ever is best 'stock' really. A headphone output is useful as I am not sure how good the one on my Azure 640A is.

Also incidentally would any of these DACs be better than the one in Marantz CD6000 OSE LE?

 

Well its up to you to make the choice! Like a kid in a candy shop

All I can do is repeat what I said, I think the SRC is the best sounding DAC under £100 I've heard, plus you have a great set of features and the bonus it can be improved via modification later if you so choose.

 

I'm a big fan of the Beresford - I would strongly recommend you take up Mr Sukebe's offer. I think it would have no trouble besting the Marantz 6000 OSE LE.

 

My inexpensive DAC recco is the Oritek Zhaolu at $450US. Non oversampling DAC modified by Oritk. Quite amazing for the price.


rollo

 

CD sales have been on the decline for few years.
Now with the popularity of the Internet and ever increasing speed of Broadband connections, it is very possible that it become the main media for distributing music. Fast, cost-effective and convenient.

Also you can rip your CDs in a lossless fomat. With the help of error correction programs like 'cdparanoia' and processing power of your PC you can have audio streaming at better quality than the original CD!

So consider a DAC with a USB input.
Have heard goods things about Trends Audio USB DAC and Benchmark DAC1 USB. There may be more.