[Taowolf51]

Hey all, just a passing thought on DACs. I'll be in the market for a new DAC soon and am down to two potential DACs. Originally, I was going to pick up the Schiit Bifrost; I really love the 5 year warranty and the fact that it was made here in the US. However, I just ran into a Musical Fidelity A3.24 for about the same price. No warranty, of course, but I've heard some great things about it (and their M1 is a DAC I lusted over a few months ago). At the moment, I'm not sure which direction to go and don't know how these two compare in performance and how possible it would be for a DAC like the A3 to break with normal use (repair prices kill me).
I'll be using both my speaker and headphone setup with these, they'll be going to an Optonica SM-4000U (not very common, but a surprisingly good amp!) which are hooked up to a pair of B&W 685s. The headphone setup will be going to a Matrix M-Stage and a pair of Denon D7000's (MarkL).
 
Another question I had has to do with a DACs output power. My Denons are very sensitive to power and perform best with low-power amps. Are some DACs higher power than others? And if so, would that cause more power to be outputted through my headphone amp?
 
Lastly, with DACs that only have one output, would RCA splitters be acceptable to use (to split the signal to both my speaker amp and headphone amp)?

 

[Taowolf51]

Has anyone had experience with the A3.24? It seems to be hard to find much info on it, especially compared to newer DACs. Has there been much in the way of advancements in the DAC area in the past 10 years or so? Or are DACs in the early 2000's pretty similar to ones today?