[Peter_Legg]

I currently have the Cambridge DAC magic with Musical fidelity X-pre and x-p200 (v3) feeding B&W cm7 speakers. I think the sound is great, except i've always felt the bass slightly distracting (forgive my novice terms) when buying my amp we tried the same CDs on the dacmagic and an Arcam FMJ CD player, which had much more balanced bass (apparently it was tighter). I was wondering if I could improve on the DAC in my system without spending too much money. (I want to use a dac as i'm using a computer as the source (apple powerbook) which has alot of my music on, but also will use Cds through this)

I've seen the Musical Fidelity A3 24 on ebay, and was wondering although it's quite old, i guess it sat pretty highly in their range at the time? how would a newer (but cheaper) dac perhaps the V-dac compare with this? I imagine the newer v-dac to have a more up to date DAC chip but surrounded by cheaper components on the anologue side? has anyone had any experience with these? the more I read up on DACs the more confused I get with all the options.

Not many shops seem to carry a range of DACS to compare, so it might be a case of buying cheap off ebay and if it doesn't suit my system re-selling it..

Thanks for any help/advice

[evans]

Peter, ive got the dacmagic as well, but through an equalizer i have and it is very good. I recently changed all my fuses in my cd players, amp and equalizer to 3Amp instead of the 13amps and this made a pretty big improvement sound wise. I am also trying further improvements by moding my dacmagic and replacing the output buffer stage amp to bursons that i bought here. Burson audio discrete opamps. I have also bought two mundorf bypass caps to solder on the bursons as this is apparently recommended. The sound improvements should not be subtle. When i opened up the dacmagic it has two duel OP275 op amps which are not the best for audio.

just a thought

[phil t]

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that things have moved on light years in the dac world.

THIS thread is worth reading.

[bikemad]

Iv had a few dacs one of the best all rounders was a Tag dac20 these can be had for £200-£300 was a £1200 unit new very flexible lots of inputs 3 coax 3 optical 1 XLR so you can plug all your kit into it it usefully has 2 pairs of stereo outs so you can decide what leads sound best.

Other than that Stello do some nice kit Iv had a DP200 dac/preamp which was very nice but not as good as the AVP2's dacs though thats something else in terms of the way it conveys music theres not necessarily that much more detail but it's the way it's placed on a sonic platter like a huge open window hard to explain really you know when you hear

I used to like MF kit then realized they dont sound much better even if you spend more money a guy I know of has had older shape & newer stuff they constantly make new models too quickly too a sign to me of new case higher price but more or less same old kit ?

I had a Xray V3 against a clock modded Teac T1 transport remember it's several years older too both though my dac the Teac wiped the floor with the MF no more bright digital sound just smooth flow thought the whole sound says it all really thats when I started to realize about so called newer tech is not all it's cracked up to be.

When you go upmarket things can get real good you can pick up yesterdays topend kit for a fraction of it's retail but be careful of cable choice you can easily get ripped off,I actually make my own cables (got fed up with hype there too !) I know they sound whey better or good as any out there regardless of price also the plugs used also make huge difference ether Eichmann Bullet's are good but WBT Nextgen are by far the best.