We had an interesting first round and truly had some of the best DAC's available that I know of. All were very impressive!
There are a lot of notes that I have to go through from everyone and type up so give me a little time to compile all of it.
Things may change in the next round as we move to a different system. So I'd really like to not base everything about every DAC just off of this one day on my system. That wouldn't be fair.
We also added a second row of seating in my den. One thing we noticed as we swapped places was that our favorite tending to change as we changed seats (at least in one comparison). One DAC that had a little more bottom end was preferred in the sweet spot but moving to the second row where bass was a little heavier, the more bass shy DAC was liked. Adding some heavy foam treatments to my back wall tending to smooth those things out a little bit. Interesting to note though.
We are also still trying to get an Arye DAC over so we can have a comparison to a well known reference. Too many of these great DAC's are new or lesser known. We need a good reference.
Without going into comparisons....
The Neko Audio D100 is very good. Info on it can be seen here:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=69315.0 I have no problem recommending someone give it a try.
One thing that might have been holding it back some in the comparisons was that it only has balanced outputs. Cables were supplied to convert it to RCA's but the cables (seen here:
http://www.nekoaudio.com/#accessories ) were no where near the level or quality of the RCA's used on everything else.
We ran the Neko on the fiber optic input from the Mac Mini.
The 32 bit buffalo DAC kit was also very good. It was running on batteries. The fiber optic from the Mac Mini sounded okay but when we plugged it in using the Ridge Street Audio Alethias USB cable, the performance across the board went up a significant amount. I have no problem recommending it as well.
The db Labs Tranquility was also very good. It is USB only and we were also using the Ridge Street Audio Alethias cable on it. I have no problem recommending it too.
Another big favorite was an evaluation board sent from Wolfson. It showcased their latest technology and we are still exploring just what can be done with it. I don't really know just yet how to handle this one. It is not really a product or even a kit. All the pieces are out there to replicate it for now, but I don't think too many evaluation boards were made. It might wind up in a product or as a DAC kit some time in the future as there was interest in this from the individual that sent it here for testing and feedback. It was really, really good!
Another one that was not bad at all and peaked all of our interest was an inexpensive Chinese made DAC kit. I really don't know much about it yet. It had all the inputs including USB. The guy that sent it is also exploring what can be done with it and how far it can be taken. It has an output tube that can be rolled, caps that can be upgraded, and it could be converted to run on batteries... So it could get much closer to the high dollar stuff for (as my good friend in Boston says) short money.
So hold on and more info will come.
