[marksas]

Hey everyone, i've really been itching to try using more tubes in my setup, right now i only have a Peachtree Audio Nova integrated (with an NOS Telefunken tube in the preamp) which hardly qualifies as tube audio i know.  When i recently came across the Jolida Glass FX Tube DAC III i thought it looked really interesting and is within budget so i'm looking for opinions on this DAC or a similar one.  Seems to get pretty decent reviews from what i've read so far. 
I'd be using the USB input on the Jolida with my Sonore MicroRend serving up ALAC files or Tidal HiFi.  Also, i currently have a Micromega MyDAC that was being used with a Sonos Connect, do you think the Jolida Glass FX is an upgrade over the Micromega? 

Also, quick question...the Jolida has a volume pot but so does the Peachtree Nova, would you turn the Jolida volume up 100% to cancel it's control?

Thanks

[Escott1377]

I had the previous version which did not offer the headphone out option.

I did not stick w/ the unit for long b/c it upsamples everything to 24 / 96 - at least the version I owned did.

I used a lot of different 12AX7's in the DAC when i owned it.

If I recall correctly, my favorite was a pair of NOS Tungsram.

I owned the new production Gold Lions as well as the higher level Chinese tubes that Grant Fidelity sells.

I ended up buying the tube based Cary DAC which passes the signal through w/o adding extra 0's and increasing the sampling rate.

[marksas]

I had the previous version which did not offer the headphone out option.

I did not stick w/ the unit for long b/c it upsamples everything to 24 / 96 - at least the version I owned did.

I used a lot of different 12AX7's in the DAC when i owned it.

If I recall correctly, my favorite was a pair of NOS Tungsram.

I owned the new production Gold Lions as well as the higher level Chinese tubes that Grant Fidelity sells.

I ended up buying the tube based Cary DAC which passes the signal through w/o adding extra 0's and increasing the sampling rate.

Thanks for the reply... I could be wrong but from what i gather, all DAC's do some sort of upsampling/ovesampling anyways which is why it doesn't need to be done by computer software first, they just have different methods of doing it and different ways of telling the consumer how or if they are doing it. 

[Escott1377]

No.

In its simplest explanation, DAC's are converting a digital signal to analog thru a chipset. 

A standard CD is 16 bit / 44.1 Khz, so this unit adds extra 0's on the bit rate and ups the frequency sample.

Again, I recommend verifying this version III may or may not do this.

So, if you are playing from Itunes or another MP3 source (compressed source), it does not sound so good - IMO.

I stream over my wi fi to a Logitech Squeezebox so it just was not a good fit for me.