Mid-priced warm sounding DAC?

Alpha3: I was actually looking at the A3 24 DAC before. I found a review for this unit on Sterophile.com, but I found Sam Tellig's review to be drawn-out and useless. I'm a bit skeptical about the very basic, homemade-looking NOS DACs. The Scott Nixon is so far the most attractive NOS DAC listed above. Has anyone heard the Scott Nixon and the Music Fidelity A3 24 who can offer comments on the differences between these two?

Search on audioasylum.com. Nietzsche posted a review that included the Scott Nixon and the MF A3 24. Based on his description (and my experience) the TubeDac will be great for a bright system like yours. I also think that the newer Tube Dacs have improved speed and extension (mine has been updated by Scott). The dac no longer sounds slow, though it doesn't slam you around. If you do listen to a Tube Dac, make sure you give the tube 30 minutes to warm up before you make a final judgement.

Three weeks have passed since first listening with the Audio Mirror D-1 NOS DAC. This DAC uses four NOS DAC chips in parrellel per channel. During these few weeks, the sound has grown warmer and sweeter as can be expected with burn-in. It is a very attractive in appearance: gold body, spiked feet, a small (and not too bright) LED light of dark turqoise blue. Designed by a engineer who builds tube pre/power amps, this DAC sounds warm and open in the midrange, yet the bass has weight and power and clarity that work well with a solid state amp (I use a Gainclone). It has great image presence, with depth and width and heigth: and sometimes an image in front of the speakers, a sense of which I never had heard before. Actually, and surprising to myself,I not yet detected any sins of commission, nothing it does wrongly or weakly--so rarely have I ever found a piece of audio gear to be so completely satisfying, so right. Presently, this DAC, at half a grand, seems to be a bargain. Liking this DAC so much, I bought a second one.

Forget about upsampling vs non-upsampling and get a DAC that reclocks the incoming data stream, because timing jitter on the SPDIF input has a far more detrimental effect on the sound quality than the DAC technology.

Or the alternative is to get an external jitter box, like the Monarchy DIP to go between the DVD and the DAC. Only $100 used, and can make more difference to the sound than upgrading the DAC.

By the way, what does the rest of your system look like? What transport are you using? What is your room like? What are the acoustics like? Are your speakers toed-in or do they face straight ahead? The key to curing the brightness in your system may lie elsewhere in your system than a new dac.