http://www.ebay.com/itm/DAC-WM8741-4-0-balanced-unbalanced-output-Wolfson-/320832760817?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ab31f6bf1#ht_3429wt_1396
 
Has anyone owned or listened to one of these?  To the untrained eye (me) it looks good for the money.  Any reason not to try one of these over say a DACMagic?  Any input is appreciated, thanks.

Yeah these are great for modding - I have one of randrop_hui's DACs (quad 1543/WM8805) which I tweaked to sound really sweet. But in my view they won't sound as good as a DACmagic out of the box. That's because the designer (who I've met) is not a listening type of guy, he just loves the engineering challenges. His DACs are great as a starting point for learning how to make DACs sound great and are certainly excellent value. But don't expect great sound in stock form - they can be made to sound excellent but its a fair bit of work.
 
On a side-issue, I can see no technical reason at all for paralleling WM8741 chips. Multibit DACs may well benefit from it, but SD types? Nah.

There is a benifit to paralelling SD chips like the WM874. It even lists it in the ebay listing for that DAC. Each time you double the number of DAC channels, you get 3dB better signal to noise, as the random noise doesn't add so much as average.

It would be indeed true, if the noise was random. But with SD chips, its not random, its deterministic. Straight out of a noise-shaping loop.

Is there any advange of using Op-amps instead of Discrete parts for the balanced outs?

Quote:

john57 said:

Is there any advange of using Op-amps instead of Discrete parts for the balanced outs?

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Simpler, smaller design.

[size=medium]I guess that the point I was making that it is easier to switch comparable op-amps in sockets to tailor the sound for the outputs or does many believe that good discrete design is better?[/size]

Claiming 'discrete design' is good for marketing. But bad discrete design is as common as bad opamp design so you'd need to look at the design details. A good discrete design will perhaps beat a good opamp design, but its really hard to generalize.