Hey guys,
I just started with some decent phones (SRH440s & HFi-580s) and was thinking maybe a nice little DAC would be a great thing to add to my setup for better audio quality. Currently I listen through a Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty PCI-e card and a Behringer Xenyx 1202FX mixer. The DAC doesn't need to have USB because I don't really want to bypass my sound card, but if it did have USB it wouldn't kill me. I'd like to stay under 100 dollars if possible.
I was thinking about a FiiO E7 but wasn't really sold on it. I liked the fact I could get the E9 dock for it later. My other thought was to wait a while and spring for something like the Maverick Audio TubeMagic D1 but that looks like a serious piece of kit and I'm not sure I need anything that fancy just to get started. The other thing I had looked at were some of the non USB Muse DACs on eBay but haven't really read a whole lot about them yet.
Is the DAC worth the cost for the upgrade?
Any suggestions on a good starting point would be appreciated. Thanks for all of your help.
