I would also recomend looking at the dCS Bartok. I just upgraded to one from the Chord Hugo TT2. We actually were able to do listening tests in my home with my Magico S1MKII. We compared the Chord Dave and mScaler, Bartok, and fully upgraded MSB premire stack. The MSB and Bartok was better to us than the Chord stack by a decent margain. They were more full bodied and did not give up any detail while presenting a larger more realistic soundstage.
The MSB and Bartok we pretty close together. The MSB had a bit sweeter top end and the imaging was a bit more diffuse ina good way. The MSB also clocked in at over $35k with the network module and the rest of the upgrades. So that should be taken into account. For my money the Bartok is the better value of the three the Dave and mscaler are over $16k.
Unless you have headphones that aren't hard to drive I would go with the Bartok without the amp. I prefer an external headphone amp with my abyss.
The MSB and Bartok we pretty close together. The MSB had a bit sweeter top end and the imaging was a bit more diffuse ina good way. The MSB also clocked in at over $35k with the network module and the rest of the upgrades. So that should be taken into account. For my money the Bartok is the better value of the three the Dave and mscaler are over $16k.
Unless you have headphones that aren't hard to drive I would go with the Bartok without the amp. I prefer an external headphone amp with my abyss.