Tax refund forces new DAC purchase :)

Steve - I'd at least give the Ack! a try. Not heard the Beresford but I've got a Copland CDA823 and I found the Ack! to be a substantial improvement. Very dynamic and detailed, without falling into the 'can't see the wood for the trees' bag too. Very musical.

 

the dax decade is sublime ....though I doubt that you could get one at the budget suggested.

its so far ahead of any other dac I've used/had in my system its silly...

dac lite ah
mf xdac
xdac v3
deq 2496
srn2496
quad 99cdp2 dac section only
black box
nos dac

The audio synthesis dax decade does I think have a smaller brother .....? this may be available sh for less

one word of warning the dax decade takes no prisoners ....and will ruthlessly reveal short coming elsewhere in your signal chain..

it will easily highlight differences between digital sources ie two transports .....and shows what your missing if your using a sqeezebox against a cd player.....

The dax also has a fine preamp section and if your only running digital source [like me] can sound stunning straight into power amps.

That said its an aquired tastes as its presentation has little warmth.... To counter this when I've had enough fridgid presentation I run it through a lovely rich warm sounding class A valve pre to restore my sanity.

 

Nope, I haven't, but if I remember correctly Julian had one and compared it to a DAC2 and found that there was very little in it.

 

This is great stuff chaps - I will read though in detail and produce a short list and get around to contacting suppliers for buy / try options.