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.

[bikerhifinut]

Nice one Phil.

I use a Rega DAC as my main feed from the CD player and squeezebox into the preamp, and I have to say the difference between the old Arcam CD72T and a Rega Planet 2000 fed into it was quite subtle. The differences are only apparent during a long listening session.
It does give me a decent converter for if and when i decide to mess about with Hi Res but for now I have neither the will nor the patience to fiddle about downloading stuff, and I hope I may be forgiven for being a bit cynical about all this new digital technology, there are too many formats and stuff and I just find it plain confusing. I know where I am with an LP!
Then again I do have a lot of respect for both Arcam and Rega products, the money seems spent where it matters.
Nice to know you like the Audiolab product as I have been tempted to think about an 8000CDQ as a "one box" solution as its got an analogue preamp built in. I may have a future problem with space and compromises will have to be made.
Andy.