NuForce uDac-2 or Musiland Monitor 02 or Audinst HUD-MX1?

The Monitor 02 US has a great DAC but terrible built-in headphone amps.  

The Musiland Monitor is great if you are, or plan to, pick up an external amp to complement them. From the phones you listed, only the 650s would improve greatly from amping. As an all-in-one unit, the uDAC-2 is better. So it all depends: amp to go with or no amp yet?

from my experience ( i had the musiland for months and the udac for couple days)  i think the musiland will take you farther in this hobby than the udac.  i never used the HO on the musiland but i heard it was okay. nothing special.  the udac2 i thought, does a better job with IEMs than full sized but thats just my impression.  id say if you can, get the musiland and a budget amp of sorts. 

the dac in the musiland is better than the udac i think.

either way, both have great resale value here and if u can find either or both used, thats even better as both units are well built.

udac2 is usb powered, not enough for the 650s

Apparently all those nice reviews for Audinst have resulted in more sales than they can keep up with. They are sold out now. You might still find retailers who have them though.

I have no experience with the Musiland or the new version of uDAC.

I did own the original version of uDAC and I don't think it was really up to the task of driving difficult headphones. Not so sure its 2nd iteration is any better in this regard.

Audinst's integrated amp if a fair bit more powerful that uDAC and neutral enough to go with a wider range of headphones. You also have the option to swap one of the opamps to tailor the sound signature a little bit (differences are subtle so don't expect too much from what is, essentially, a tiny chip in a sea of components).

I'd suggest a brighter sounding opamp for HD650 (like AD8620) and a smoother one for the Grado's. The stock opamp works very well, but you can try something like AD797, AD8599 or LT1364 (which are warmer, smoother sounding).

Quote:

Originally Posted by KnightK 

The Musiland Monitor is great if you are, or plan to, pick up an external amp to complement them. From the phones you listed, only the 650s would improve greatly from amping. As an all-in-one unit, the uDAC-2 is better. So it all depends: amp to go with or no amp yet?

I see that you have Yulong D100. How does the dac compared to Musiland Monitor? Night and day difference?