Thinking about taking the plunge, listening to 95% of stuff now via Spotify. Any experience with DACs at the £200ish price point?

Im using one of these with my Marantz CD5000 as transport.

Sounds very, very good.

S/h arcam r dac, should be available for less fhan that.

Ive got a beresford caiman dac. Comes under budget and sounds amazing for the money. Had a few of those “wow i haven’t that part in this song before”. Bass drums nicely controlled and don’t run away anymore. Guitars have more crunch. Also doubles as a brilliant headphone amp.
But, he doesn’t sell them anymore. The replacement is called the bushmaster i think.

These are pretty good and under budget:

http://www.richersounds.com/product/dacs/teac/ud-h01/teac-udh01

I stream Spotify to a an apple airport (via airfoil software)and then optical link it into a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic and on into the amp.
I’m very pleased with how it works and with the airfoil I can stream itunes or any browser (BBC, youtube, etc) audio as well.
The quality sounds pretty good to my ears,although I’m not sure how reliable they are anymore 🙂

I have one of those Teac DACs HoHum linked to. It works great for streaming music via an Apple TV but no good using the optical out on an AirportExpress. I think this is a known issue with AirportExpress. The DAC is very good for £150.

Even as a premium user, and with the high bit rate enabled, i find the intrinsic compression very noticable when streaming Spotify through my Cambridge Audio DAC and into my ARCAM FMJ system. Really clips the top and bottom off the tracks compared to say the CD version ;-(

Last I heard, Spotify high bit rate was only on a subset of tracks, and a small subset at that.

Love my rDAC and used in conjunction with my Sonos has replaced my old CD player.

Thanks all, I too stream Spotify via Airfoil etc. Researching a bit more it does seen that perhaps the Spotify compression is more of a limiting factor as maxtorque mentioned. Wondering now if a DAC in that situation might actually make setup worse ie show up the compression more.
More research needed! Really can’t be assed any more with ripping lossless etc.

Some spotify music is better than others

http://www.hifiwigwam.com/showthread.php?76705-Dacs-that-work-well-with-spotify

Spotify is great for discovering new tunes and for playing in the background but for actual listening too it falls somewhat short of what i expect these days, MacBook > Native Instruments Audio Kontrol > KRK VXT6 speakers & KRK 10 Sub. The compression is noticeable but not overly so, depends on how you listen i guess – i’f i’m sitting down specifically to listen to music i’ll play a lossless file, if i’m buggering about i’m quite happy to stream spotify.

I have been doing a bit of reserch on these units do they really bring something to your music at that price. I am looking at making the laptop I use to dj the hub of my home hi fi system. I use traktor to dj it has a inbuilt sound card but I would like to bypass the mixer and get straight into the itunes for day to day use, at the moment I just have the minjack to rca to do this.

I moved to the Netherlands from the UK earlier in the year. As it’s only going to be temporary, I didn’t want to bring my CD collection over with me (1000 albums plus). I’d got the majority of the albums ripped to my PC, so investigated connecting my PC to my hifi system and playing my music that way. I tried connecting via the 3.5mm headphone port on my PC but, even to my ear, which is by no means cultured, the music sounded pretty dead. Someone suggested to me trying out a USB DAC so, after a bit of a search, I ended up with one of these: Musical Fidelity V-DAC 2 I’m no expert and don’t have the most sensitve ear, but it’s a massive improvement on the sound and worth every penny.

I use a laptop > MF V-Dac 1 > White Noise Audio headphone amp > Senn HD600s and it sounds pretty good.

I reckon the MF usb dac sounds better than the ‘audiophile’ soundcard I used to have in my PC, M-Audio 0404.

I have been doing a bit of research on these units do they really bring something to your music at that price

I also use Traktor pro along with Native Instruments S2 controller and Ableton & Controllers all fed through my oldish Native Instruments Audio Kontrol soundcard which sounds fantastic with real punch and clarity and my Audio Kontrol doubles as my usb soundcard for all sound duties from my macbook to my speakers and sub

Are you using traktor and dj’ing straight of your laptop’s headphone jack without using a controller?, and if so then i guess you’ll be using your laptop’s inbuilt soundcard which will not be up to the task, check out the Native Instruments Audio 2 soundcard which is very decent for little money and connect one output to your amp using an rca to stereo phono splitter (usual red/white plugs) and the other output for headphone cueing, or you could buy a controller with inbuilt soundcard such as the Numark Omni pro and connect it up to your amp unless you are running active speakers (with built in amps) in which case connect your speakers straight up to the soundcard or omni control/mixer.

I use the A10 sound card and tracktor 2.5 scratch with a Pioneer mixxer two 1210’s and a x1 for when I don’t need to beat mix or when it’s a mobile gig (I play with a buddy that has a portable sound system attached to his bike which is solar powered). But at home I would like be able to use the laptop as a juke box looks like father christmass is getting me a nuforce udac-2 so I will see how it goes.

The Echo Indigo DJ card is another option for laptop users – has one line out 3.5mm output and one volume controlled for headphones.