I'll second MAC at most price points, but burn them in or you'll never hear what they can do. Steve says he's burning them now: he's great to deal with: call him and double check. Also, BEL, "The Wire", if you can still get it. Brown recently died and he was a bit difficult to deal with, so stocks may be quite low. I've still got a bunch of the ic's: they replaced Transparent Ultras, Purist Colossus and Siltechs, fabulous for the price, a bit grainer than the MACs. HP used them for a long time in one of the Abs. Sound reference systems.
If you're up to making your own, Chris at VH Audio can sell you the components and you can make a world beater IC for the price, but you'll probably screw up one or two before you get the hang of do it yourself cables.
Frank at Signal cables is also great to deal with and sells no bs, good quality cables that, to me at least, are a bit more system dependent than the BEL's.
I used the BEL for years in many different sysems configs and they worked quite well in all of them. The MAC stuff sounds better in my current system, but I have little time with it with various different gear.
If you're up to making your own, Chris at VH Audio can sell you the components and you can make a world beater IC for the price, but you'll probably screw up one or two before you get the hang of do it yourself cables.
Frank at Signal cables is also great to deal with and sells no bs, good quality cables that, to me at least, are a bit more system dependent than the BEL's.
I used the BEL for years in many different sysems configs and they worked quite well in all of them. The MAC stuff sounds better in my current system, but I have little time with it with various different gear.