Dac in a box or Trends Audio USB DAC UD-10 for transport from laptop

[muzikk]

Hi everyone,

I started lurking intensively and posting again last week to sell some of my "not used gears" to finance improving my laptop. After a long 2 year pause due some personal reasons but mainly beacause I spend to much TIME and MONEY while being active here (for example I just ordered a portable amp which I don't really need), I am ready for a major upgrade.

I am planning to use my laptop as my main source and I don't really care about upsampling, oversampling, jitter, bit perfect or what caps this dac uses etc.... I am just looking to improve the sound quality of my FLAC, Wav and Mp3 files played with winamp with either ASIO4all or Kernel Streaming (since I have experienced myself that they indeed do make an improvement) through my laptop. If at the end it can compete with a $1000 cd player in general sound quality and resolution I will be more than satisfied.

I have allready ordered a DAC in a box usb to convert the usb connection into a spdif out. I was torn between the DAC in a box and the Trends Audio USB DAC UD-10, but the small size made my decision since I can easily take it along when I am travelling with my laptop and have something better than the integrated soundcard. If someone thinks I made the wrong choice please specify why, all opinions are welcome.

Next, I am looking for a DAC around the $300-400 price range. My main headphone is the HD600 maybe a HD650 later on and I do not find them dark or veiled at all. My sonical preferences have a slight tendency on the warm side and wide soundstage over high detail but without sacrificing speed and energy. As an example I do enjoy the sound signature of a Marantz player over a Rotel or to a lesser degree a Musical Fidelity player. I do not mind tube DACs as long as they are not too "tubey". Opinions from people moving from a decent cd player to computer as source (or has certain experience with both sources) are very important for me so please post your opinions.

All constructive inputs are welcome and if you have additional advices not related to DACs to improve the sound of my laptop as source please feel free to do add them.

[aris]

I am also In the same process of switching to computer as source and although I haven't made up my mind yet, I will probably purchase a nuforce icon soon. It seems to do everything well, for cheap and it has a small footprint.

I currently I use the headphone out of my laptop which is not too good

[1UP]

Backing up a bit, you want to rival a $1k CDP from your laptop and generally speaking, I don't think a DAC of $300-400 is going to do it, especially with a USB-S/PDIF transport, which I've never been too thrilled by, though I don't know the DITB.

Being a bit of a skinflint, I'd have gone with something like the Devilsound DAC, which is extremely portable, bus-powered, and has a technically niffty implementation; it would also have saved a lot of money if your budget didn't include a headamp. A Keces 152 or Corda Cantate would have been worth considering as very good integrated dac and headamp units.

Assuming you're excluding the cost of a headamp from the budget, and didn't need portability, top USB DACs to consider would have been an Audial Aya II, Wavelength Proton, Hagerman Chime (there's one on the FS forum right now at a pretty good price), or Benchmark DAC-1 USB.

Back to reality - a good coax driven DAC for $300-400, I'd look at the Keces 131.1, or if you are up for a bit of a gamble with delivery times, an AD Labs Rockna RD-2 or RD-3.