Audiolab Q-DAC

[Phil Y]

Got myself one of these a few days ago. I have never had good sound from CD but that is not surprising with my old and cheap CD player. A friend lent me his expensive Audiolab M-DAC for a week and this sounded great using my player as a transport but at £600 is a bit pricey for me.
I found some reviews that said the Q-DAC is close in sound to the M but at £400 is more reasonable. I thought this was still quite a bit for my relatively small number of CDs but a search revealed that Sevenoaks Sound and Vision have them at £200 in a sale!

My impression is that it does not sound quite as vivid and colourful as the M-DAC but it is not far behind, for £200 I am well pleased. I can finally, genuinely enjoy listening to CDs. Still not as nice as vinyl but then I have spent a lot more on my record deck.

Phil.