I've owned a VDAC for 5 weeks and have just swapped it for a Cambridge DacMagic. The VDAC has a very "Musical Fidelity" sound. Music Fidelity is a company that specialises in beautifully built high end hi-fi but as a lot of their amplifiers are pure class A designs, the sound is akin to a valve design. The VDAC majors heavily on mid range presenting a solid and well separated sound stage with plenty of depth. The downside is also its strength. The mid range, especially vocals is sometimes too far forward to the detriment of the rest of a recording. If you like vocals and appreciate harmonies then this could be the DAC you need. Looking at the box, it's no great looker with an air of being home built. The switch between the USB and the digital input feels flimsy and I think gives the box a feeling of being home built. The reason I swapped it for the Cambridge is that I felt I was listening too much to vocal music in preference to the rest of my collection and I realised that I wasn't happy with it.<br />
Installed the DacMagic a couple of days ago and at first I wasn't happy with the sound stage which seemed flat compared to the DacMagic. However it's now burning in very nicely and constantly improving. I listen to mostly rock and jazz, using the wav lossless format. It's a much better balanced sound with no obvious faults with my musical tastes. It looks and feels well built and is very easy to switch between inputs. I'm so satisfied with it that when I've finished ripping my entire CD collection to WAV lossless, the Arcam CD player is going on Ebay, as when I listen to the same music through the CD player and the DAC, I can discern very little difference in quality.
