Help, upgrading entire system

[henry]

I have just upgraded a 20 year old system. So far, got CJ art mono block amps and CJ Et5 preamp. Have old CJ cd player (Dv-2b). Can i use that and get a new dac or should I get a new player with good built in dac? Also want to begin ripping existing cd's and downloading HD tracks to a separate source. Have been looking at Naim, Simaudio, wavelength, DCS debussy, Ayre, and Chord. Almost went with Chord instead of CJ, but always go back to tubes. Does anyone have an opinion? Many thanks

 

[wdomeika]

Nah...

 

[realhifi]

You are looking in rarified air I would assume. If you want to stay in tubes you could do a LOT worse than wait just a bit for a reference vacume tube dac from the "other" tube company, ARC. Another option that would pretty much blow your mind is something along the lines of a Linn DS, which streams cd or high resolution from a hard drive based system (can be either PC or Mac) and is basically making heads turn at every stop.

 

Either the Akurate (or go crazy and get the Klimax) will sound incredible into the system you are currently assembling. I'm guessing you are going to have speakers also? I would be very deliberate in this next choice of dac, transport, computer as your front end. You have some superb equipment so far and you really want to exploit that to it's fullest.

 

Or....you could just get them both! Use the Linn (Akurate) for streaming into the (yet to be spoken about) Ref Dac from ARC or simply get a Linn Klimax as both your streamer and Dac for around the same money as an Akurate and (yet to be named) ARC Dac.

 

PS. The ARC Dac8 is superb and is here now and reasonable (in the context of your system) and even a simple streamer into it will sound amazing into your system. For that matter, so will a stand alone Linn Akurate DS. Linn has a new DS called Akurate DSM with multiple digital (and analog) inputs that will stream but also be able to take any digital device pretty much out there, straight into it, including HDMI.

 

 

 

[barrows]

excellent, computer ready (async USB) tube DAC, you should definitely consider the Aesthetix Pandora.

 

[wdomeika]

I'd highly recommend Wavelength Audio. Either the Cosecant or Crimson.

 

http://www.usbdacs.com/Products/Products.html

 

 

Cheers,

 

Bill

 

[Part-Time Audiophile]

I'd first roll some tubes. The bass on that pre and amp combo can only be helped with better tubes.

 

Then I'd look at a Lampizat0r DAC. If you like tubes, you're gonna love the Lampi.