Originally Posted by tjumper78
ive never had a musiland but i'd say keep the svdac04.
i had it before, sold it, and now i have keces da-151 which is being praised by many people here.
da-151 costs about $100 extra. it sounds very nice and all but i dont think its $100 better than svdac04.
svdac04 was better than super pro usb by a large margin, and it was also better than emu0404 sq-wise imo.
if you ask me, svdac04 is a great usb dac for its price. if i had to pick one between svdac04 and da-151, i'd pick svdac04 b/c its just as good as da-151 but cheaper while having more useful features. and its built-in amp is not too bad either, and its placed on the front of the dac. musiland's amp jack is in the back.
Thanks for the advice tjumper! I was even thinking about "upgrading" to a EMU 0404. I believe I purchased the SVDAC last year after reading about your opinions.
Since I mostly use the SVDAC04-U via USB I began to wonder if the Burr Brown PCM2704 IC may not sound as good as the EMU 0404. I know there are a handful of USB DAC's using this IC, but looking at the data sheet it doesn't look too impressive. The sampling rate is only 48 kHz, and only 16 bits? Looking on M-Audio's website, they list 192 kHz and 24 bit for the EMU 0404, but I'm not sure if they're talking about the USB functionality. But if you found the SVDAC04 to sound better, I suppose there's a lot more to a quality of a USB DAC than just the IC being used, but I can't help but wonder what USB IC is used in the EMU 0404.