Best DAC for <= $500?

Meridian Explorer fits your criteria for $300. Another $100 gets you Concero or Xonar Essence One; not sure on the fly that they have optical.

There is the NFB-17.32 found here: http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/dac/NFB17/NFB17EN.htm

It's a little over $500 with shipping but it's built like a tank. It's a fully balanced dual Wolfson dac with a beefy power supply that weighs around 11 pounds. 

Why don't you start by specifying what you are looking for in the sound from the DAC? There is no such thing as best DAC in any price range. What there is to find is a set of criteria that would have a place for every DAC ever made. So you have to list your criteria and then find the DACs that fall within it. So far all that you have put on the table is your cash. My suggestion is to put your wallet away for now. That should be the absolute last thing on your list before pulling the trigger.
 

i'm after a dac in the same price range (around $600-$700). want something neutral for my HD650 and lehmann audio black cube amp.

you really need to decide on your budget and what you need....there are always better DACs as you go up. However, you need to stop somewhere before your spending is out of control. I have not tried it myself but the HRT music streamer HD is $450 with balanced design and XLR outputs

Parasound Zdac has XLR outputs, a built in headphone amp and goes for $475: http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/parasound-zdac

Originally Posted by redmagic 

Since posting this, I have raised my budget up to $700. What would be some good DACs in that price range? I have been looking at the Schiit Gungnir, the Audio-gd NFB-1.32, and the Yulong Sabre D18, though I don't know which one is better. Some help on this would be great

 

I have a buddy that owns the Schiit Gungnir and loves it...those guys at Schiit Audio know what they're doing and if you don't mind paying a little more than $500 I doubt you could go wrong with the Gungnir. Best of luck!

Quote:

Originally Posted by lithium1085 

you really need to decide on your budget and what you need.

I don't support your view on the budget. Some DACs have a lot of fat on them whilst others are lean in extra functionality. It is quite possible to buy a DAC that is fat with features and not strictly required by the buyer. If you take into account the cost of those unwanted features you could easily have opted for a cheaper DAC without those features, or a similar priced DAC without the features but with a better performance.

A typical example is the Rega DAC. It ticks many of the right boxes, but it has no headphone socket and the USB is limited to 16 bit/48KHz. So it is a brilliant choice for someone who wants top performance from optical or coax and does not want a headphone output. But if you need USB and headphone out AND the same sort of performance in audio output then you have to fork out more for those extra features. The more expensive DAC won't be sonically superior.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baxide 

I don't support your view on the budget. Some DACs have a lot of fat on them whilst others are lean in extra functionality. It is quite possible to buy a DAC that is fat with features and not strictly required by the buyer. If you take into account the cost of those unwanted features you could easily have opted for a cheaper DAC without those features, or a similar priced DAC without the features but with a better performance.

A typical example is the Rega DAC. It ticks many of the right boxes, but it has no headphone socket and the USB is limited to 16 bit/48KHz. So it is a brilliant choice for someone who wants top performance from optical or coax and does not want a headphone output. But if you need USB and headphone out AND the same sort of performance in audio output then you have to fork out more for those extra features. The more expensive DAC won't be sonically superior.

I agree with you but one has to decide what one wants in price range and features at the same time.....Once you have this narrowed down one can decide the best quality among these