DAC Questions

Thanks for the information, y'all. I appreciate your time and experience!

The Lampi see as like a great choice if its sound qualities are what you’re looking for.  I’d highly recommend pairing it with an Acoustic Zen MC2 digital cable that I own and I think very much mirrors the sound of the Lampi 3 and would make a great match.  Here’s a used one that is actually the previous version (you can tell by the connectors) and should sell for about $250 for 1.5 m, which is a great length for a digital cable.  Seller is using the current version’s price as a reference, which is misleading, irrelevant, and overinflated IMHO.  I got a 1m MC2 of this version for $180, so the $400 he’s asking is ridiculous and he’ll never get it. 
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649812402-acoustic-zen-mc2-rca-to-rca15m5-feet-33500/

Last, if you’re contemplating streaming in the future, and you definitely should IME as the worlds of new music you’ll discover can be literally a reawakening as an audiophile (much of it in hi-res BTW), consider eventually moving to something like an Innuos Zen Mk3 streamer/server as you can burn all your CDs that aren’t available for streaming directly into its onboard CD drive (and not mess with integrate in external drives) and have access to all your music along with the world of streaming music from your chair.  You have a very good but very old transport that is only gonna last so long and can’t play hi-res music, so maybe it’s time to look to the future?  Just a thought, and best of luck with the DAC and other stuff moving forward.  

I’ve only ever owned delta sigma dacs in the past in the 1-1.5k range. Had basically given up on digital and recently started “trying” to get into vinyl. Not that the digital sounded bad just kind of flat. Cymbals and highs never seemed quite natural. Been running a Musician Aquarius for 4 days now and this thing is an absolute cracker of a dac! Not looking for one just happened in a trade for some speakers I was offloading. Total system changer, never would have thought a dac could do that. 

@mofojo Congrats on the Aquarius!  I’ve got the Musician Pegasus and am also very happy with it.  Not sure what connection you’re using into your DAC, but I recently added a Denafrips Iris DDC that let me use the i2S input on my DAC and was a considerable upgrade in sound versus using SPDIF.  If I was you I’d seriously look at trying a Musician Pisces (very similar to the Iris) or the Leo (similar to Hermes) with a short HDMI cable as the i2S signal doesn’t like to travel far.  Just my experience FWIW.

Thanks Soix,

Looking at those units it appears it’s usb input not a spdif input? Can you order that as an option? I believe I only have optical and Spdif out of my transport.