EVS Millenium Owners

I am using an old Studer A727 CDP (the heavy duty pro version of the Revox B226) as a transport and it sounds great. I believe it dates back to the late 80s, but I think it sounds better than my Pioneer DV-05(DVD) and my old Denon DCD2650. I also preferred it to a Rega Planet as a one box CDP. It must have somewhat low amounts of jitter, or the Millenium takes care of the problem...whichever, I don't notice a problem and I prefer it to the other players I tried. I have tried several digital cables...Better Cables basic model, Apogee Wyde Eye, Cardas Lightning 15, Acoustic Zen MC2, and an Elco Premium Silver. I've settled on the Elco for now, but the Cardas and Acoustic Zen have their strengths and the Apogee is amazing for $35. The EVS is a really great DAC for the price...you won't be disappointed. Every transport and every cable I tried sounded good. Sure...I did comparisons and I preferred certain transports and cables over others, but I could easily live happily ever after with any of the transports and cables. They were all musical through the Millenium 2, but the DAC is good enough to spend some time finding a good cable and transport. You'll notice the difference and you'll be happy that you did. As far as buying a Millenium 2 today?? Yeah...I think I would. They were a great deal when new, but they're an even better deal used. A one-box player *could* be better, but you'd have to spend a lot of money to get the parts and design quality that went into the DAC2. I'd like to upgrade to a one box player with hi-res capability and have Ric Schultz (from EVS) mod it, but I don't see the point in doing that until more companies come out with decent universal players. Why commit to SACD OR DVD-A now? In another year or two more companies will be offering good players that are capable of playing both. Until then, the Millenium DAC2 is an excellent choice for Redbook CD and/or DVD.

I've not at all familiar with the the Cary 303 player, so I can't help you there. The EVS DACs are very nice and, like I said, you can always pick a transport and forget about it. It will sound good. As far as that goes, I'm sure the Cary will too. There are so many great sounding components, and odds are in your favor that most will mate well with your other equipment. It only turns ugly when you start comparing components...that's when the real headache begins. Assuming the Cary 303 and EVS DAC are in the same league sound-wise, the DAC is handy if you use a DVD player too. I switch cables and use it for DVD whenever I watch a movie...it's a huge improvement over the stock DACs in my DVD player. I suppose sound is the main issue though. How old is the Cary 303?? The EVS DAC 2 has 24/96 upsampling and the design is only one year old. If the Cary is several years old the EVS may very well sound better, but that's just a guess. I know the Cary's are supposed to be nice players. I wish I could be of more help. Too bad the EVS DACs aren't more popular. I doubt there are many people that have compared the Cary directly to the EVS.

One more thing...

I just did a search for the Cary 303 in the classifieds and noticed that one of them features HDCD decoding. I don't know if they all do, or not, but the EVS DACs do not offer that feature. That's something to think about if HDCD is important to you.