Sam Ash has a return policy, that's where I found the Apogee USB DAC for about $900 +, back then.
Lavry used to have a trial period on their DACs too. Benchmark and perhaps others like PS Audio do too.
the MHDT DACs seem to have no trouble selling around here either... provided you get one and it's not to your liking.
so there's that.
None of which, IMO will ingender bass like the DAC 3 will, though... and it's remote with volume control & source selection. the dejitterizing aspect is killer. it does convey ALL the info on the disc, but not in any untoward fashion. If there is any knock on it I can thinnk of it can sound dry.... if not set properly into a particular system. it will only provide at best, via all but the USB interface (16/44.1K), 24/96 PCM sampling.
other DACs will upsample or over sample as the case may be.
as to upsampling the resulrs IMO the sound gets rounder and positioned further away from your chair.
For around $1500 $1600 or so these days, given it'll act as a preamp too (just in case), and has USB & dejitterizing of the input signal via BNC, AES, & SPDIF, and can be run xlr or rca, at the same time, it does present a value and a lot of flexibility.
There are others in the $1K or so neighborhood you might prefer.
Good luck.
Lavry used to have a trial period on their DACs too. Benchmark and perhaps others like PS Audio do too.
the MHDT DACs seem to have no trouble selling around here either... provided you get one and it's not to your liking.
so there's that.
None of which, IMO will ingender bass like the DAC 3 will, though... and it's remote with volume control & source selection. the dejitterizing aspect is killer. it does convey ALL the info on the disc, but not in any untoward fashion. If there is any knock on it I can thinnk of it can sound dry.... if not set properly into a particular system. it will only provide at best, via all but the USB interface (16/44.1K), 24/96 PCM sampling.
other DACs will upsample or over sample as the case may be.
as to upsampling the resulrs IMO the sound gets rounder and positioned further away from your chair.
For around $1500 $1600 or so these days, given it'll act as a preamp too (just in case), and has USB & dejitterizing of the input signal via BNC, AES, & SPDIF, and can be run xlr or rca, at the same time, it does present a value and a lot of flexibility.
There are others in the $1K or so neighborhood you might prefer.
Good luck.