Hi ichill,
The Valab is great! I'm pretty ignorant to various sound enhancing technologies outside of tube and solid state options, so I'd only recently understood that a) I was running my itunes through the airport express DAC and b) that such a thing as an external DAC exists.
I bought the Valab because I am at heart an audiophile on a cheapskate budget and it claimed to fit that bill. I ran the itunes through the optical input and the Oppo DVD player (980) through the coax input, into the Rotel analog surround processor (RSP980 - before the days of dolby digital.)
The Valab definitely widened the depth of music from both sources - it added presence as well, but not unpleasant - just crisper sound. As I mentioned before, I'm hard pressed to describe tone (and sometimes chuckle at the way people describe sound the way someone would describe a wine "the sound rolled off to a fruity and crisp finish!) but for sure the Valab made a noticeable improvement in both sources.
I've since picked up an older digital rotel processor (the RSP985 - identical to the 980, but with DACS - these older surround units are a bargain for great 2 channel music.) I'll soon sell the analog rotel if anyone is interested. I rewired everything to run the DVD player through the optical of the Valab and the Coax of the Rotel and A/Bd them and they were very close to each other. I suspect I'll be entering the world of tubes one day and I'm quite intrigued by the Peachtree products with built in DACs. I might sell the Valab since it would be redundant in the system, but I might keep it in case I go with an analog
anyway, bottom line is that the Valab offered definite improvement over the DVD and modem DACs. It was about the same as the Rotel's DACs and I've never compared it to other external DACS. If I bought an analog Tube pre, for example, I'd buy a Valab to work with it in a heartbeat.
I hope that helps.
Steve
