My personal advice is that it is all too easy to think that a change of DAC will make a difference and as a result you actually do hear a difference where none actually exists. (Expectation tends to be self-fulfilling). Pretty much all competent DACs sound very similar.
My moment of enlightenment happened several years ago when I bought/borrowed a Lucid DA9624 on sale-or-return. (Thanks to Digital Village in Barnet - nice people to deal with). The Lucid was an entry-level 24bit 96kHz professional DAC - about £800 at the time - and I compared it to the 16bit 44.1kHz DAC in my CD player - radically different DAC technology. I thought the Lucid sounded marginally better, but was surprised the difference wasn't greater. When I did a level-matched blind test, I scored precisely 50%, ie. there was *no* audible difference between the two. DACs are probably the electronic component with the least influence on the sound. Preamps are *way* more variable. IMHO a £200 DAC isn't going to make much if any difference compared to the SB3's onboard DC. I'd spend the money on some more music instead, or start a "speaker upgrade" fund. -- cliveb Transporter -> ATC SCM100A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=90939
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