Emotiva XDA 1 DAC Any thoughts?

I use the XDA-1 ($149) at work with my Audioengine A2 speakers and TIDAL lossless streaming. It sounds OK on those speakers but on better speakers, such as my home desktop KEF LS50's, the XDA-1 are not that good. I use the Benchmark DAC2 at home and that is a killer DAC for $2000.

I had the XDA-1 as well. Notice I said had. With the Emotiva cd player and XPA amp, I found the end result harsh and etchy. It was Emotiva's first attempt at a DAC. They claimed it had lossless volume so I bought it to use as a digital pre. Later on they finally admitted it had lossy volume. I bought an Pure i20 dock to digitally connect my iphone to the dac. It was super bright, and unlistenable. I'd recommend Schiit or Cambridge or Parasound's new DAC.

Owned one a few years ago, bought it new when they were 149.00. It's decent for that price, certainly better than the least expensive HRT inline dac. I think it uses an Analog Devices dac chip. It definitely isn't the last word in resolution but it sounds decent. Not hard or etched sounding but I think it only goes up to 96K. I had one for 6 months or so but sold it and bought a Wyred4Sound DAC. Night and day difference in sound quality.

I thought it was rather busy looking and the display does not tell you the sampling rate. I hated the bright blue lights on it. If you are stuck on Emotiva, I would look for the more recently discontinued XDA-2. It is much better sounding. The XDA-1 is at least a 3 year old DAC.