CDP / DAC Advice required


Hi,
I'm looking for a new CDP/DAC. I heard my friend's Wadia 581 last week, I like it so much but would like to have something less serious, less powerful than it. Can you all advice me some?
under 3K for CDP/ inder 2k for DAC
uglystupid

Showing 2 responses by uglystupid

Based on my experience:
Benchmark DAC1
Bel Canto DAC3

their performance are far away behind my friend's Apogee mini DAC on the same system set up with varity set of cables tested. And Apogee mini dac stil far away behind Wadia.

Just EMC that I never heard, thanks you all guys.
Hi Rich,

The place i tried Apogee and DAC3 is my local Bel canto showroom, but I'm not sure about their on-off and warm up. Our objective is actually to find something to kick my friend's Apogee out but we got conversed result.

The system contains:
Transprot: Bel Canto CD-2
Power Amp: Bel Canto 300
Speaker: T+A CRITERION - TS 350
I'm not sure about the Digital cable cuz the staff don't allow me to change it by myself, and I didn't bring other digital cable there(we brought just analog). English is not my primary langauge but I'll try to describe.

Both my friend and I agreed that Apogee sounds much wider and much more detail, well how much?... much enough to make one of Bel Canto staff ask me about the Apogee's price. Apogee can seperate each instrument into piece by piece which each individual detail. The biggest difference we noted was when we play Andrea Borcelli's. When played with apogee we feel like Andrea is standing and sing in front of a big orchestra band, each instruments were seperated. But with DAC3, we feel that now Andrea 2-3steps more forward from the stage, but singing in front of a speaker which playing his backing track not a live band. Stage is small and we can't identify each instrument.

Can you guide me something I missed with the DAC3? I actually hope much more from it and would like to back to try it again for the best result.