mink70
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2006
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[size=13.333333015441895px]Hi everyone. I've been a music lover for years and have been happy with a vinyl-based system based around Shindo tube electronics, vintage Tannoy speakers and Garrard 301 LP playback that's taken me a long while of trial and error, and learning, to assemble. Recently, I've become fascinated with digital playback from my MacBook Pro, using lossless files, for both speakers and headphones. However, compared to analog, I've found every digital combination I've tried to to sound fatiguing and harshly wiry in the lower treble, with a kind of hollow, insubstantial sound that immediately reveals itself to be a reproduction. It lacks coherence and most of all, presence. Admittedly, my digital experience is limited to a few CD players as well as relatively inexpensive DACs from Audioengine and Centrance. But even the Centrance DACport and the better DACport LX, while providing excellent detail and soundstaging, still sound wiry and digital to me. I know I've hardly scratched the surface of possibilities—can someone recommend a DAC, preferably under a grand, that sounds musical and relaxed? Not smoothed over or occluded or warmed up with cheap tube stages, mind you, but genuinely natural and fatigue-free? You know, something with actual tone?[/size]