Best DAC for around $10K new or used

Leog2015 Hi.

I love what R2R Ladder Multibit dac's bring to the music compared to Delta Sigma dacs, they have a jump factor and body to the vital lower midrange compared to Delta Sigma, which are sweet and smooth but to me boring to listen to, especially on Redbook CD's.

I would strongly recommend a good listen to the MSB Signature DAC IV because as they say on their website it has a " Platinum Signature Ladder DAC" as their D to A convertor.

Cheers George

So you can also save on not having a preamp as well.

That all depends on the preamp.

Happy Listening.

My top 4 were

ARC
Aesthetix Pandora
DCS
MSB Analog w premium power supply.

i set range at up to fifteen K new. Agree there is no such thing as BEST...

They all have virtues and leanings but in end I went with Pandora. have since upgraded it to SIG and there is another level of upgrade possible w stealth caps.

i think Jim White is a really talented digital and analog engineer, wanted a path to upgrade vs replace, appreciate tube rolling and also with path to DSD which the SIG has. Some future proofing provided by FPGA approach ( other dacs but not all have this) and finally an engineers engineer approach to Farady cage and some control of RFI and grunge.

My 2 nd choice and it was close is the MSB Analog.

I would say that the home audition is perhaps MOST important step.

Tomic601, looks like you too can benefit by going direct from Pandora to poweramps to get ultimate resolution as Aesthetix points out below.

"An optional high resolution relay-based volume control may be added to either Pandora or Romulus, allowing the units to directly drive a power amplifier.
The Pandora and Romulus volume control prevents all resolution loss by operating partially in the digital domain for small 1dB steps and partially in the analog domain using relay-based switched resistors for large 6dB steps. Using this method, eighty-eight 1dB steps are created with zero loss of resolution."

Cheers George

Tomic,
Did you get the volume control option?
Have you rolled tubes?