[CFC]

currently i only own the senns paired with a cmoy, but sooner or later i will be migrating to the oh-so-great mghead camp

now, with all my savings ready to get burned, i first need to get few things straight before i go on a mad shopping spree.
it wasnt a too far back when i concluded equinox were hailed the king of replacement cables; however, shortly after my arrival at head-fi i was convoluted to find out many were boasting their cardas and clous...
i spend a good bit of time on my computer listening to mp3s and playing games and whatnot, so what i would want is a digital out from my sound card. would art di/o need some serious mods to sound right? my aim is to keep the budget for the DAC+transport under $500. that way i could worry about gettin some quality interconnects (which one to get anyway?) and a secondary set of cans/amp - a hfi-650 and a meta42 are the ones i am drooling over right now.

to sum it up:
equinox or cardas or clou?
which tubes to go with the MGhead OTL?
which interconnect?
what to do with the art di/o (if any mod is necessary at all?)
which transport to use?

 

[Nick Dangerous]

Whee! Opinion time!

Equinox... because its airy, sublime nature is astoundingly delicate

Sylvania 5751 or Raytheon 5751 w/your favorite pair of EL84 or 7189

Outlaw interconnect from www.outlawaudio.com

Send Art to Wayne at www.boldercables.com for "the full deal" ($265). He'll also sell you a very nice SP/DIF coax cable.

Transport? Do you mean CD player or SP/DIF capable sound card?

 

[CFC]

by transport i meant a cd transport, or whatever its called (kinda hazy with terminology here...) i remember seeing some DIY projects turning used cdrom drives into cd transports... wonder if these would do the justice to this setup?
not asking you to spoonfeed me or anything, but not that you are on it... mind telling me where to shop around for the MGhead and the tubes?

 

[mezzman]

You can find the MG Head at Headroom:
http://www.headphone.com/layout.php?...tID=0010030000

or at Divergent Technologies:
http://www.divertech.com/mgheaddt.html

I got mine from Headroom with great results.

The EL84 tubes can be orderes from Triode:
http://store.yahoo.com/triodeel/6bel71elsv.html

I have the Tesla/JJ EL84 tubes, I prefer them over the Ei versions, better treble resolution.

Good luck with the 5751 tubes, they are around, you just gotta look. Ebay has them from time to time, also worth trying online tube shops.

 

[Nick Dangerous]

I acquired my tubes from eBay. There's another thread hanging around discussing "Chimera Labs", but that dealer has probably been swamped by now...

Searching for 5751 and 7025 tubes can be a pain... but I choose to look at it as a treasure hunt.

 

[CFC]

before i take the plunge... if i chose to go with a CD Transport with minimal featureset costing no more than $400, would this setup sound good enough to smoke a reputable cd player? the only reason to go with a DAC was gettin a 24/96 sound card plus a good cdp on top of that looked a bit redundant. i take it if you skimp on the CDT end, the whole setup might get noticeably marred. the key here is to sound quality on the source end enough to cope with the MGHead maintaining best price/performance ratio; at the moment i am more worried about what magic the equinox and the MGHead would bring about to my HD580, the source could be upgraded when i scrounge up some more $$$. hell, i might as well just get an entry level DVD player that takes digital input (so it could take care of the mp3s/ogg's or whatever the soundcard spits out)