I am looking to purchase a Dac my budget is £6000. My system comprises comprise mc7200 and JBL studio Monitors. Any ideas? Don’t mind second hand but is has to be in good order, I have noticed on eBay that they rotate sub par stock in an attempt for you to buy their flagship models.
As a user of their products I’d go with a Holo May L2 or L3.
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Check out the leader board for DACs at Audio Science Review. There are astonishing options for just a few hundred pounds!
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Seriously, if you have that kind of budget, spend it on your speakers or other parts of the analogue chain, not the digital elements.
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Which JBL studio monitors do you have? If they’re not the far side of £10 grand then I’d agree with others that you’ll not get the benefit of the cost and quality of a good DAC
I’m not a DAC naysayer, far from it; better DACs do sound better, but you need to give them the opportunity to shine
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I decided to order the S.M.S.L SU-10 brand new. Fed up of broken high end equipment being sold by bricks and mortar retailers.
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RockNa WaveLight.
Overlooked but extremely good in the 6-7k price range.
Not an owner myself (I ended up spending much more), but listened to many DACs, and found the Rockna wavelight DAC much superior and much to my taste than the similarly priced Chord, Hifi-Rose, Simaudio Moon, Luxman, McIntosh, …
Seems like an ass-backwards way to buy something. Find a DAC you like and want and buy it if it’s within your budget or less.
You’ve seen the light! 
There’s no way I would spend £6k on a DAC. Despite what hardcore audiophiles might believe, D/A conversion is a solved problem and affordable far east manufactured DACs do it perfectly.
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Plenty of them have issues with popping sounds, with gapless playback, some mute the output between songs or when Bitrates change.. some are not able to do DoP correctly.. software issues, updates that never happen. Lack of customer support, especially with a new dac model released every other month.
Plenty of the Far east stuff is crap.
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That’s not been my experience. I had issues with an SMSL DAC a few years ago over coax from a Bluesound Node 2i. Returned it and bought a Topping DX7 Pro and never looked back. I’ve had other SMSL and Topping DACs and also a Benchmark DAC3 HGC. No issues with any. I’ve sold all of them now apart from the E30II I use in the gym at home - the 2 proper setups are fully active using Motu Ultralite Mk5s as the multi-channel DACs.
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A $200 dac and 60 years of Tidal.
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Look at the cen.grand or the holo audio may kte. Both are awesome dacs.
That’s a decent budget so ensure you hear and enjoy the units you eventually purchase my friend. I’d use replies from forums merely as a list of things to try and hear if you can.
For my tastes and my system, I settled on a Chord Mscaler/ Hugo TT2 combo, which sounded much more real life to me than any of the more recent flavour of the months. Weird aesthetics though so you might prefer something else on that basis (I love the looks). The Dac is literally that though, and needs a transport to be work. I used the Musical fidelity MX-stream as a fantastic Roon endpoint for a year or so while I saved a bit for the Rose RS130, and that was a brilliant choice I’m sure many will be happy with. I use a Mcintosh amp myself and can confirm there is decent synergy for me.
After more than 40 years of enjoying Hi FI, I’m very happy with what will likely be my last system and I hope you find that magic for yourself.
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Second hand Chord DAVE. Best option in this price range.
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Depending on where you live you may want to buy [from] a local company. I wouldn’t buy from outside Europe, but that is my opinion.
I use a Linn Klimax DS streamer which has been upgraded to Linn’s designed /manufactured in house dac ORGANIK..
£4,600 UKP was about right as the performance is superb.
Yes, for around $10,000, you may want to look into buying an actual company.
Spending that on just a DAC is too much.
AJ
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I missed a ‚from‘. Cheers.
I have a PS Audio Directstream Mk2 that I really enjoy.