A couple of years ago I tried out a number of DAC (thread in here somewhere) and concluded that the only noticeable improvement to the DM+ (caveat in my system and room and musical tastest) was the Chord Qute, but the the relative improvement nowhere near justified the of over £900, approx 3 times that of the DM+, the latter works extremely well using it's native USB 2.0 ASIO driver (which also transforms the dacmagic XS as well).
However, times change, and I now will be using headphones a lot more than I have done in recent years, and Joel has done a great job is supplying me with some DT880s. The headphone amp in the DM+ though is not as good as the DAC section by some margin, probably a lot to do with the ridiculoulsy high "<50 ohm" output impedance (which means they could be up to 49 ohm etc) which is adding too much harsh brightness to the upper mid / treble depending on the phones used (it makes my SR80s almost unusable).
So, I'm after something to potentially either replace the DM+ or compliment it in the form of a headphone amp. I've listened to the Audiolab M dac and thought it was inferrio, so that's off my list. A Hugo would be nice, but not at £1400, and the qute doesnt have a headphone amp. The beyerdynamic A20 looks very interesting, I've already also ordered an A200p (from Joel again) so at least will get some flavour of what its signature might be) .
I'm open to other suggestions, though probably ruled out the Caiman II as I can't be bothered with battery power for my main system, and I suspect it won't better the DAC I already have. In truth, I am so impressed with the Caspian, that I've been pestering Roksan to come up with an M2 Pre / Power with a built in DAC / phone amp, so far all I've seen is the K3, which probably isn't the answer, though I could be wrong as I've not seen any reviews of it yet.
However, times change, and I now will be using headphones a lot more than I have done in recent years, and Joel has done a great job is supplying me with some DT880s. The headphone amp in the DM+ though is not as good as the DAC section by some margin, probably a lot to do with the ridiculoulsy high "<50 ohm" output impedance (which means they could be up to 49 ohm etc) which is adding too much harsh brightness to the upper mid / treble depending on the phones used (it makes my SR80s almost unusable).
So, I'm after something to potentially either replace the DM+ or compliment it in the form of a headphone amp. I've listened to the Audiolab M dac and thought it was inferrio, so that's off my list. A Hugo would be nice, but not at £1400, and the qute doesnt have a headphone amp. The beyerdynamic A20 looks very interesting, I've already also ordered an A200p (from Joel again) so at least will get some flavour of what its signature might be) .
I'm open to other suggestions, though probably ruled out the Caiman II as I can't be bothered with battery power for my main system, and I suspect it won't better the DAC I already have. In truth, I am so impressed with the Caspian, that I've been pestering Roksan to come up with an M2 Pre / Power with a built in DAC / phone amp, so far all I've seen is the K3, which probably isn't the answer, though I could be wrong as I've not seen any reviews of it yet.