what is the best, least costly DAC...?

For the most part the chips used in all DACs are insanely cheap, a company like MF that has a skilled engineering team and low manufacturing costs can leverage those to make an excellent dac that retails for very little money.

I heard the V-DAC in a shop with the Mac and BAT systems I talked about earlier. Those systems are sonically different than what I own, but I've heard them a million times. Maybe when I can afford one of them, I'll buy one. I've never heard either sound dull and lifeless, until then. We tried all inputs including USB fed FLAC files.

My home system was built around a Rega Apollo. The Cobalt was bought used from a dealer as a stop-gap. My system is a Bryston B60 and Audio Physic Yara Evolution bookshelves. They're a very revealing combo. I feed the Theta Cobalt with an Apple TV using Apple Lossless files.

The V-DAC sounded the same at home. It sounded a bit smoother and fuller than the Cobalt, but that's about it. It sounded a little better using the coax out from the Apollo with a Tara Prizm cable (discontinued), but so does the Cobalt. USB didn't fare any better.

I really wanted to like the V-DAC. Who wouldn't want a $300 DAC to get them off the merry go round? If I didn't want it to work out for me, I wouldn't have taken it home. Every system I tried it in had the same end result - uninvolving sound that had no emotion or soul to my ears. It may have done the technical stuff well, but that doesn't mean much to me if it doesn't carry a tune.

To bring it back full circle, if the OP has a nodded Rega Saturn, I think he's looking for some groove in his gear. Basically the flat-earth philosophy as the Naim, Linn, and Rega guys have. If it doesn't swing, nothing else it does really matters.

Everyone has different priorities. Everyone listens for what they like in their system. If it doesn't boogie to my ears, I don't care what else it does.

Just my experience with it. That was my only intent.

I had the V-dac and the Tri-Vista SACD player in the past. Like some other MF gear I came across they don't seem to do the PRAT right and didn't get me fully involved. I guess some people are more sensitive to this aspect of musical enjoyment than others.

That said the V-dac is good value in what they done right, I actually thought the tonality of this little conception better some other more expensive MF gear.

I have not heard the RAM mod Rega Saturn, but I own the RAM fully modified Oppo player with cyrogenic treatment. Suffice to say the V-dac holds no comparison.

I received my V-DAC about three days ago, and am honestly blown away with it everytime I listen to the lossless files streaming to it from my Squeezebox. This is noticeably better - as far as my aural memory can discern - than the Cyrus CD-8x I had not too long ago; better than the Rega Apollo I auditioned in my system... The soundstage is wider and deeper, the bass is deeper, and that sense of air is just bizarre.

I'm using plain old Blue Jeans Cable coax (1' of Belden 1694A) from the 'Box out to an Audio Innovations Series 500 integrated (Sovtek input/Gold Lion KT77 output) over DH Labs BL-1 Series II out to a pair of Swan Diva 2.1se monitors over BJC Ten (Belden 5T00UP) speaker cabling.

I don't have the budget for much at all - heck, you'll hear about the AI500 on posts from years ago from me - but when one of these came up for $240 I jumped on it. I read so many reviews of the V-DAC, and like almost *every* review of *every* product I've read, some love it and others mock it; some think it's a giant killer and others think it's just a budget product that'll suffice in a pinch.

I know I'm stating the obvious, but there are so many variables in all our systems - not the least of which has nothing to do with the equipment itself: the room the system is setup in - that my love of this tiny box that is making some of the best digital music I've probably ever heard, at least in my system, may be "dull and lifeless" in any number of other systems...

Although I doubt it.

Wait till you hear it with an upgraded PS ! It makes a big difference.

That beeing said, I have just found another DAC, which has all the rights to became a classic - it is Arcam rDAC. It is 50% more than the V-DAC (without the upgraded PSU) but sounds much better than the mighty V-DAC. It actually sounds even better than the V-DAC with the outboard PSU, which pricewise puts this DACs in the direct competition.

The rDAC sounds very fluent, analogue like with a nice texture, and offers a trully AMAZING resolution. HF decays, spatial clues, HF smoothness - the dac sounds so real that it is scary. And that comes from a dCS Puccini CDP owner no less !

The icing on the cake is asynchronous USB 24/96 input with dCS licensed technology !