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Opinion: Just spent time with the EE MinMax DAC Plus...

Thought I'd chime in here about the Eastern Electric MinMax DAC Plus. Yesterday I had a chance to spend the afternoon with a friend who took delivery of one of these in late 2011.

I brought over my Sennheiser HD800 cans and AUNE X1 DAC/headphone amp (very capable inexpensive unit in a portable box!) for comparison. I had a chance to listen with the SS vs. tube stages. Music source was Mac Mini with TosLink to the MinMax (did not bother with USB).

Bottom line:
- If I had this DAC, I would *never* use the tube stage (at least stock tube he had in there). It's audibly noisy even at normal listening levels through the HD800 and sounds muddy especially in the treble range compared to the solid state output. Maybe tube rolling would help but have my doubts.

- Construction is good.

- Convenient digital inputs with coax, BNC, XLR along with USB & TosLink

- Sound quality with the SS output stage sounds great. Not sure I can say it sounds much better than most decent DAC's or that the Sabre chip is that big of a deal (remember folks, no DAC is capable of full 24-bit dynamic range much less 32-bits being advertised here!).

Summary: Good DAC if you listen to the solid state output. I would not bother with the tubes. Price isn't bad especially for the convenience of the numerous digital inputs available.

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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.


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