Greetings fellow audiophiles!
I am a long time reader but new member. Listening to music has always been an essential part of my life and as I've matured good quality sound becomes more important as well. Music has always been a part of my life. Started playing drums at the age of 12. Then moving on to guitar, keyboard and bass. Playing in bands. Making my own music. And always listening. Both to the old and the new. Motown, 70s and a little classic but also fresh electronica and singer/songwriters and the occational pop/rock/indie. To put it simply I listen to all music that is good, honest and heartfelt.
My audiosystem consists of the following:
Speakers: Harbeth C7-ES3
Amplifier: KR Audio VA340i
Wireless dac: Audio Pro WFD200
Computer: Asus X101CH
I am very pleased with this setup. But I suspect that there can be further improvments made in the dac-area. Although I am limited to only using toslink because that is the only digital-out on the wireless dac. And I value the wireless because it is important for the computer to be portable while still playing music and I have yet to find anything else that can do that with another digital connection than the toslink.
The Audio Pro WFD200 (Living WFD200 | Audio Pro) uses some kind of Burr-Brown dac and it is actually quite good. No big flaws really and the wireless is a dealbreaker for me. But as it has toslink out so I could connect another dac on the end of it.
The improvent I am after is in musicality, the ability to make the digital music perhaps come more alive and sound more analog so to speak. Have read good things about NOS dacs in that area and especially (maybe) the ones that use some sort of tubestage. I have used tube amplifiers for years and love the way they (according to me) can bring out the inner details and emotions of the music. So I am looking for the same thing but in a dac.
Red Wine Audio Bellina (or the earlier Isabellina) and MHDT Labs Havana (not capable of doing any mods on my own as I am useless with electronics) are the ones I have found within my pricerange of $2000. The Metrum Octave also looks very interesting (though no tube stage) but is supposed to sound at it's best only with a usb/spdif converter and I don't know of any wireless such.
So I am looking for help in choosing dac. As I live in a small town in Sweden there is sadly not much chance to listen-before-buying without ordering from abroad first as the market here for such dacs is pretty much non-existant. Anyone have any input on these? Or maybe have any other suggestions on good dacs to use with toslink? Or maybe another wireless system?
I have already used a Squeezebox for a couple of years but never really liked it. Want to be able to get all of the sounds of the computer out via wireless connection, not only through a dedicated server software. Maybe 75% is played on Spotify Premium but I also do some critical listening on my own 44.1/16bit wav-files and also mixed mp3's/youtube at parties...
Thanks!
