You may want to consider non-oversampling DACs if you decide to upgrade in that area. There are many excellent ones out there and for very reasonable prices. Check out the Audio Mirror D1, a great deal at $550 here on Audiogon. If you want to do some research on non-os design concepts, check out the Audio Note and Sakura Systems (47 Labs) website. Good information is available there. I made the jump over to non-os and I'm not regretting it a bit. Very anaolg sounding.
Time to upgrade CD transport and/or DAC?
This question has probably been asked eleventy billion times before, so forgive me if I'm not asking anything new.
For about the past 6-8 years I've been running an Audio Research CD-1 transport with a Timbre Technology DAC (balanced outputs on both). Something tells me I might benefit from replacing them with a more recent all-in-one CD player like the Cary 306/200, Ayre 7ex or Sony 777ES/9000ES--or any other equally high quality player. Or, I could simply upgrade the DAC with something more recent featuring upsampling like the Benchmark DAC or whatever.
I'm wide open to recommendations, except I'm not willing to go overboard on the $$$. Preferably, I'd buy a recent used model her on 'Gon.
Thanks for your thoughts.
For about the past 6-8 years I've been running an Audio Research CD-1 transport with a Timbre Technology DAC (balanced outputs on both). Something tells me I might benefit from replacing them with a more recent all-in-one CD player like the Cary 306/200, Ayre 7ex or Sony 777ES/9000ES--or any other equally high quality player. Or, I could simply upgrade the DAC with something more recent featuring upsampling like the Benchmark DAC or whatever.
I'm wide open to recommendations, except I'm not willing to go overboard on the $$$. Preferably, I'd buy a recent used model her on 'Gon.
Thanks for your thoughts.