New conundrum, new advice sought! (a.k.a. Keces vs. Entech)

[TopPop]

Somebody is going to slash my tires for my bothersome meddling around here... I just know it...

I found out recently I that I wouldn't be able to use the battery power supply for my Trends UD-10.1 transport, because when I unplug it to charge the batteries, Foobar crashes. This is a problem, since I'm running my old PC as a headless music server; if Foobar crashes, I have no monitor/mouse/keyboard to be able to get it back up and running. The problem is that I found this out after I had already bought an Entech Number Cruncher 205.2 off of a fellow head-fier!

So I decided to try to sell the Entech and the Trends, and use the money to get a Keces 151 instead. I wasn't even planning on opening up the Entech, and just shipping it back out when it sold. However, I sold my current DAC yesterday, and wanted to have some tunes, so I opened up the Entech and put it in the system... big no-no... this thing sounds way better than I had expected... much better than $100 has any right to give nowadays!

So now the question is, do I keep the Trends w/o battery power and use the Entech (while knowing that the full potential of the Trends is not being realized), or do I still sell them both and get a Keces? I've never heard the Keces personally, so I don't know if it truly stands up to the hype.

I would like to hear from people who have tried both the Entech 205.2 and the Keces 151, if possible (I know you're out there!), because I want to know how these two specific DACs stack up next to each other. Or if nobody has tried both, for those of you who have compared the Keces to another decent DAC, which was/were it/they, and how did the Keces fare?

Again, my equipment is Beyer DT-880s, and Little Dot MKII. I listen primarily to acoustic rock, folk, jazz, blues. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

[TopPop]

I noticed that one person voted for the Keces...

Have you compared the Keces with a transport/Entech combo? Or another DAC? If so, what were your impressions?

[rockabillybass]

The problem with polls like this is that not many people will have actually heard both choices. Choosing a budget dac is difficult because you can't audition them together easily.

Good luck...

[TopPop]

Originally Posted by rockabillybass

The problem with polls like this is that not many people will have actually heard both choices. Choosing a budget dac is difficult because you can't audition them together easily.

Good luck...

Yeah, that's what I figured.

But I thought somebody had at least compared the Keces with another non-USB DAC and transport.

[1UP]

Keces and Trends use similar Burr-Brown DACs to do the USB interfacing; the Keces then buffers the DAC's internal analogue output on the same PCB.

You gain nothing by sticking the Trends in front of the Entech DAC here and would just be adding another source of jitter.

[TopPop]

Okay, I sold the Entech (still trying to sell the Trends... ), and bought Keces last night. Should get here by the end of the week.

Sweeeeet.

Thanks for your help and advice!