Interesting that this thread was revived after being dormant for so long. There's so much development in DACs that I have to wonder how much of the early posts is still relevant.
I'm still using the same DAC I had when the thread began, and no one has mentioned it so I thought I'd throw it out here.
Mine is an original Meridian Explorer, USB-powered and fed by a MacBook Plus running Audirvana Plus that's up sampling AIFF rips from CDs to 24/176.4. Mk I is only $150, if you can still find it. Mk II ($300) is basically the same, but it has Meridian's new super-duper streaming technology that Tidal has adopted.
The Decware Zen UFO sits on my desk, next to the Mac, and it's only a short slide on the desk chair from the desk to the optimum listening position for this viable, but hardly optimal listening room.
ZLS graciously allowed me to bring the Mac-Meridian combo when I visited him to listen to his RS5 and Alnico speakers. (Once again, thanks, Zack for introducing me to the Alnico Monitors.) He didn't think much of the Audirvana-Meridian combo, and much preferred his Pure Music-DAC set-up running at 16/44.1.
My feeling is that contemporary digital recordings and recently re-mastered transfers from analog material are usually in 24/192, then down-rezzed to redbook via some kind of algorithm. Seems only fair to see if there's an algorithm that can fill in the extra data for 24/192, and I think Audirvana does this quite musically.
I also brought my Mac-Meridian rig to Decware World Headquarters where I auditioned the Zen amp. So here I was, in the amp designer's own listening room, listening to his amp and his speakers, fed by my little $150 DAC. I just figured it made sense since it was so portable, I could use my own recordings, and it would be the source for whatever amp and speakers I would end up with. Unsolicited, Steve said he liked the sound.
What I get from this combo is remarkably analog-like. I should also say that I've never much liked digital. In fact, I only broke down and bought a CD player, by California Audio Labs, when the last LP cut-out bin disappeared from music stores. And then I listened to music less and less.
The audio capital budget is committed for the foreseeable future to restoring my analog gear, but at some point I'll surface and see what the DAC options are then. In the meantime, this A+ > Meridian > Decware Zen > Alnico monitor rig is really quite good, giving me tremendously rich tone and presence and rendering so finely the micro dynamics of a virtuoso like Radu Lupu on late Schubert piano sonatas that I think he might actually start to make records again if he could only hear what I'm hearing!
