Help me choose my first DAC

[Morgolf]

Hello. I am quite new to hifi and all that and I've been recently building my first hifi setup. Right now I am planning to buy a DAC but i just can't make up my mind what should i get. I am looking for something entry level and cheap. I have Marantz pm5005 with JMLab Chorus 705 and I have my PC plugged into that directly right now. What I want to do is to have PC -> DAC -> Marantz setup and I also am looking for a DAC that has a good headphone amp for my Sennheiser HD 518. I don't really care about the DAC being portable since I am not planning to use it that way.

From what I have researched I found NuForce uDAC-3, Audioengine D1, Schiit fulla 2 (that is not available here in Poland) and FiiO E10k (my brother owns that but it seems it has some kind of problem with 88Khz) and I can't decide on what to choose here.

I need some advice on how to pick the best one out of those or perhaps you have better ideas on what to choose?

 

[Gray]

Welcome to the forum Morgolf.

I think that if you were to compare the sound of DACs, you may be surprised at how subtle (or even non-exsistent) you found the differences to be, certainly when compared to say, speakers.

When I was in your position, I bought an E-DAC (an O-DAC in a fancy case from Epiphany Acoustics, a company that is no longer trading) It cost me around £100 and to me sounds no worse than one I tried that was 6 times more expensive.

I'm not familiar with any of your choices, but picked one at random (the Audioengine) to look at.

Seems like a fair price, with some good customer reviews (apart from some issues with Windows computers that some seem to have had)

I quite like the look of the forthcoming 'M-DAC mini' model from Audiolab, which is half the price of any of their previous DACs, but still around twice as much? as your maximum budget. I would expect it to have the good headphone amp you're after though (also, at the same price there's the well liked Mojo)

I wouldn't advise going any cheaper than your budget for a DAC with decent headphone amp and don't get too stressed about sound quality differences.

 

[muljao]

Maybe a dragonfly red. Apparently very good headphone dac, and can be used as aline in to your amp also