Perhaps not the best but with the same input and driver combo as the Extreme and HA-2 it should do a more than decent job and seriously, under a grand how are you going to do much better?
http://www.head-case.org/index.php/topic,2384.0.html
Not in your $300 budget but if you want good sound out of the K340s that'd probably be a hell of a start. Actually, it'd probably be a fine place to just end. You might see if he was willing to sell the amp with just some of the tubes to bring the price down a bit.
Please don't lump all of DIY together. Put my dac and something "commercial" like an Ack DAC next to each other and you tell me which was made in my shop. Oh wait, mine looks better and more professional, my bad.
It's more forgetting everything that's transpired over the last two years and like Vicki I used it as a reference for other sites. The PM's are what I'll really miss, in addition to some real comedy gold there was some good technical info saved there as well.
Anybody got my 10 or so pages of feedback?
Or the 800 or so PM's that I didn't back up in the last two months... Frack there's a lot of good information in there.
I'd say you need to tell us a bit more about your rig (source, amp, etc), a bit about your budget, and also what type of music you like to listen to for starters.
I'd have to say that my memory of Dave's rig at the Boston Meet (RPX-100 + balanced Ed 9s) was much less offensive to my ears than Boze's this past weekend (Krell + SE Ed 9s). The bass was so overpowering single ended that I just couldn't listen to anything else. It reminded me a lot of the Hifi 700s that I used to have and reinforced my position that there may be no better cans for movies than Ultrasones. Music on the other hand, I have yet to hear sound natural coming from an S-Logic can.
If we're really being fair those two chassis probably cost the better part of $400 all by themselves. I'd guess that Ray's parts cost is probably under $100, but not by half.