Desktop DAC for around $500?

[manaox2]

The Bifrost sounds extremely competitive at that price with those features. I would like to hear it.

[ecclesand]

I picked up an XDA-1 when Emotiva was liquidating their stock a while back.  In factory condition it sounded very good, but after replacing all the signal caps with Elna Silmic and Cerafines, it sounded much better to my ears....definitely worth the money I paid for it.  Have you considered the XDA-2...I haven't heard it yet.  Then, there are the older Dacs that sound great...Parasound DA/C 800 and 1000, Assemblage DAC-2, GDA600 to name a few.  I'm a sucker for the older PCM chips but they may not be your bag.

[jvlgato]

I like my Arcam rDAC.

[Dusty Chalk]

Any of them work with linux?

[skullguise]

Any of them work with linux?

 

What about a USB -> SPDIF converter?  I think several work in Linux.....

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, worth looking into, although that would rule out the HRT, as it is USB only.

[Nenso]

The fully loaded Bifrost looks very promising and would make for a modest setup, paired with some powered speakers. Since discovering that my motherboard can do coax output, USB is not so much of a priority any more, seeing as coax input is better, leaving me with more choices such as an older Assemblage. Only issue I see going coax over USB is that laptops generally won't have support for it, but seeing as this is going to be a desktop DAC, it is not a problem.

[grawk]

USB is better except when it's not. lots of shitty digital outs on motherboards.

[Riotvan]

Any of them work with linux?

Whatever you do do not get something with a tenor usb receiver chip, especially the 7022. The volume control is fucked because it's very low and cannot be adjusted. So no "bit-perfect" so to speak by maxing out the volume and avoiding the crunching of the precious bits. This is basically for every kernel release of 3.2 and higher, maybe they fixed it by now but i gave up a while ago.

Also hook it directly into alsa and avoid pulse audio unless you want to use it for other stuff as well besides music.

If you want it to work reliably the xmos based receivers are great but a bit more expensive, i use the musical fidelity v-link 192 because it has aes/ebu and nothing else was free on my dac. But i think there are cheaper options if you only need coax.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Riotvan