Who was that Billy Crystal character..."Better to LOOK good than to FEEL (SOUND in this case) good!" I get much the same guff from my wife (though I'm no fan of your typical metal boxes that pass for components either) and as a result most of my system is on a rack in the closet in our living room. 6 meter long RCA's connect my pre to the dual mono SET amps (tolerable appearence with cages), and short speaker leads to the Klipsch LaScala's. It all works great and the front end and pre are even better insulated from sound and vibration in our lathe&plaster house. Since a DAC is pretty important I wouldn't buy one for looks alone, though I'm sure there are good ones that look great too. The Chord sounds promising...don't know your budget though. The Bel Canto is fairly small, though plain. You can always house it or camoulflage it in something more appealing to your wife. Perhaps since your wife is calling the blows here you could have her pay for it and have Josh at Electronluv build you a custom DAC. Nothing I could imagine would be more aesthetically pleasing than that! http://www.electronluv.com
"Aesthetically pleasing" DAC???
Okay- I know it's going to sound cheesy, but I'm wondering if anyone can suges a reasonably priced, high quality DAC that also happens to be "eye catching". My system is in our living room, so the wife insists that components not look like components ;-) Just to give you an idea of what I mean, my system currently includes the Basis 1400 turntable, Shanling CD-T100 cd player, and Cary SLP-98P preamp. Any ideas? Any tubed units with open-tubed layouts? Any help would be greatly appreciated!