You would be foolish not to look at the NAD M33. Used prices are now down to below $3000. Unanimous rave reviews when released and still a top tier piece. After 18 months of auditions it was a clear winner. Drives my MoFi Sourcepoint 888’s superbly.
Is there a better all-in-one streamer/DAC/Integrated Amp under USD 5K?
For driving a pair of small, 4 ohm 86 dB speakers (DALI Menuet SE) for a small to medium size room at low to moderate SPLs, is there a Roon Ready, all-in-one streamer/DAC/Integrated Amp under USD 5K that is likely to perform sonically better than the Gato DIA 250S NPM?
- ...
- 39 posts total
@siciliano i owned one for a year. Very pretty to look at. Couldn’t get anything that sounded like live, dynamic music out of it. I blame the DAC & streamer. Had they built it so you could bypass the dac on analog input, I might have kept it and used a better streamer and DAC for a different room. But as, for that larger space. it let me get a Jeff Rowling 625 S2 and Corus preamp to drive my Epicon 6s, with an Aurender n200 and LTA Aero DAC. Incomparable improvement. It’s the M10 —quite attractive but quite boring sonically — that is driving my Menuet SEs that needs to be moved to run the office TV and a pair of KEF LS50s. So, one of these new mini- all in ones will be the pick, as much as i’d love to be able to full size and get that Boulder 866 or to try out the Atoll SDA300. My guess is that I’ll take the 30 day demo on the 400 watt (8 ohms/800 at 4) Gato DIA, hear how they’ve powered and adapted the Pascal amp module and the Burr Brown dac chip. |
If you are open to tubes and a little increase in budget, I had a fantastic experience with a Bluesound Node feeding an Audio Research GSi75. This integrated has the DAC and phono standard, it was not optional like their current integrated amps. I had one for a couple years before moving back to separates. I have no doubt that it would be more than enough power in a S-M sized room. |
@veemike the Stellar Strata MK2 is a fabulous integrated (I’ve got one in my living room), but it’s a full-width component and doesn’t have built-in streaming. The original Stellar Strata does have built-in streaming, but it’s still a full-width component. To all, the OP seems pretty clear that he’s looking for a small-footprint all-in-one that will give his setup with the Dali Menuet SEs a richer, more musical presentation than the NAD. Wish I had a recommendation, but I don’t have any personal experience with high-quality all-in-ones. Just trying to keep the discussion focused, to help OP as much as possible. |
- 39 posts total

