Looking for a tube (or tube sounding) DAC

op

Thanks for your suggestions. It’s not the I don’t like the Yggy, I have an itch to upgrade to a higher level and I love the sound of tubes. I think the Aquahifi DACs are out of my budget of $6,000, but they sure look nice! I’ll check out the MHDT Orchid. I do have the Holo Audio May KTE on my list, but it’s not tube. Definitely still on my list. I’d love more suggestions, and comments on the Tubadore III and Lampizator Baltic 3.

given your response i would suggest an mhdt unit, or the audio mirror tubador, or even an ava fet tube hybrid dac... these units are very very good, natural sounding DACs that have a more gentle, yet tonally rich presentation than the Yggy... but in addition, they use 1-2 common vacuum tubes where you can shape the sound of the dac to different levels of ’tube-i-ness’ without a lot of effort and expense by varying the tube type or brand

an example is that mhdt makes a number of r2r dacs (google 'mhdt family'), based on different now rare, older r2r chips... but they use a common tube buffered output stage, run through a single 5670 'shorty' tube... one channel through each side of the dual triode 5670... i have tried several mhdt dacs and the tube used actually alters their presentation more than the base dac and chipset (see separate thread here on mhdt tube rolling)... same with the tubador... you can pull the factory supplied mini tubes and use a pair of common 6dj8’s... old ones from germany, uk, japan or usa will alter the sonic presentation substantially...

Aesthetix Pandora, Lampizator

Steve,

Some DAC makers give a 2 week trial. Not the Chinese.
But their DACs resell in seconds so you can have some fun.

Your list is pretty good. 
Possible List additions:

-Doge 7 $2.3
-Audio Note 4.1X-$3.0 but a kit. 
-Denafrips Venus $3.8

I recently bought the Audio Mirror Tubadour 3 and like it
a lot. Tried a Denafrips Ares 2 first and sold it. I like the
AM sound over the highly defined Denafrips sound.
Very personal as both are very good. I require no sharpness
on the top. 

Some great Portland retailers. Do any stock some of DACs?

Thanks everybody! I decided to order the Holo Audio Mat Dac. I'll let you know how it sounds in my system. 

I appreciate your advice!

Steve

-Doge 7 $2.3

While I can’t compare it to any of the other DACs in the thread, I own the Doge and it’s a great value for the money. And if you’re judging a DAC’s tube-iness by its number of tubes, I suspect the Doge’s eight tubes when running balanced outnumbers any of the other DACs’ tubes.