Hello, I plan to use my new TV with Hard drive attached to play my music so need a DAC to connect Digital Audio Out (Optical) to my Roksan Kandy amp, I only have £150 to spend, what should I get?!
Thinking further, it doesn't have an optical input so the choice is more limited. So apart from what's been mentioned, Beresford DACs spring to mind but spending more than £150 might be the way forward unless buying 2nd hand.
Beresford Bushmaster is a no brainer around this price point.
Had mine for a couple of months and really impressed. You get 2 optical and 2 coaxial inputs and a quality headphone amp which drives my Sennheiser HD650s as well as my previous Little Dot III valve headphone amp.
As a Dac the sound quality is superb - this may have something to do with the fact that the Bushmaster is completely passive - using no nasty op amps to muck up the sound. The Bushmaster also has a Virtual DC circuit that isolates the DAC from power supply noise.
When I was auditioning the Bushmaster I compared it against an Audiolab MDAC and actually preferred the Bushmaster (which is remarkable given the price difference). Stanley even fine tuned the output impedance of the Headphone amp to match the requirements of my HD650s at no extra cost.