Which dac?

[admin_exported]

I have a budget of around £600 for a new dac, the 3 dac's i have in mind are the musical fidelity m1, rega and audiolab m, i wont be able to demo as there no dealers local to to me, i know it's not always a case of which is better but rather what would gel with my system or get the best from it, i have owned a few mf bit's over the years, i am a fan of the mf sound so the m1 is top of my list. The rega and audiolab dac's are also in consideration, both have fantastic reviews and many of you on here seem very happy with them, is there an obvious choice? whats your thought's guy's?

 

[Anonymous]

And theres this.. http://www.audioaffair.co.uk/Quad-Link-D-1-DAC/product_5719

 

[Anonymous]

My (somewhat biased ) vote would be for the M-DAC. Imho it looks good and sounds excellent once burned in. The filters even give a nice option to tweak your settings to your preferred house sound.
Theres a active forum on it elsewhere with regular contributions from the designers which can give you a nice warm fuzzy supported feeling. They're also actively updating official and request firmware for us tweakers which is nice
Further enhancement/add-ons are also in the pipeline to extend and improve the product so upgrades are also possible if that's your sort of thing.
Availability seems to be the main issue though apparently some have shipped to dealers in the last week or so ..

I've briefly heard the Rega and thought it was also really good in the system it was in (though 5 minutes hardly counts as extended testing lol) - but my friend really loves it so neither would be a 'bad' buy probably.

For me it's the MDAC as it does most of what i need now really well and recent firmware updates have improved things further with lots of tweakers options coming soon too. I suppose it depends on what you want it for and what you'd like to connect it to etc Sorry that probably didn't really help possibly as good products such as these really come down to personal preference.

 

[Anonymous]

I sold my v-dac2/psu2 on flea bay last night, using the old phono lead, sound's alright. I get paid on the 29th of feb, so far all i keep hearing from dealers is the audiolab m-dac is out of stock due to large demand, even if i did plump for the m-dac finding one maybe tricky, the musical fidelity m1 dac remains the likely bet plus it will leave £200 change for a new interconnect and a power chord for the dac.

 

[moon]

I sold my v-dac2/psu2 on flea bay last night, using the old phono lead, sound's alright. I get paid on the 29th of feb, so far all i keep hearing from dealers is the audiolab m-dac is out of stock due to large demand, even if i did plump for the m-dac finding one maybe tricky, the musical fidelity m1 dac remains the likely bet plus it will leave £200 change for a new interconnect and a power chord for the dac.

I would suggest the Musical Fidelity V DAC MK II

 

[Anonymous]

Ha, it's a fine dac, i am told the mf m1 dac is quite a bit better than the v-dac 2 as is the rega and audiolab m-dac, if thats the case then i should be impressed as the v-dac 2 is a bloody good dac.

 

[Helmut80]

really depends on what you want from your DAC. Rega is non-asynchronous via USB. M-Dac's got volume control on top of that.