Well, Santa was good to me this year. He brought me a Grant Fidelity DAC-11 DAC/Preamp. (and almost a new AVA 400R amp, but Santa has 2x tuition payments and thought better of it).

After 6 hours of burn in, I am pleasantly surprised (I have read that it needs about 100hrs of burn in). I have it hooked up to my panasonic RP56 DVD player as a transport, JVC VBK 8000 AVR and my MMG speakers. The sound from the DAC out is good but the unit shines from the Tube outputs. Unfortunately it does not bypass the volume control on the tube outputs like the Maverick TubeMagic D1 which this clearly out performs. So you have to adjust the Volume control and leave it. I have mine set at about 2/3 which is about where I estimate the output corresponds to the AVR. If you are using it both as a preamp and DAC, then this is not an issue.

The sound is smooth, clear, with nice tight, well controlled bass, and clean treble. There really is no digital edginess. Resolution is good but limited by the JVC AVR. The sound leans to the warmer side slightly.

Tomorrow I will swap out the JVC for the Class D Audio CDA-254 amp that I recently bought and will report on it as preamp-dac combo. After New Years day I will give it a try in my reference system and give another report.

As far as build quality goes, it is very solid and well built, especially for its price point. It is definetly a step up from the Maverick TubeMagic D1 which is a very good DAC in its own right.

The DAC-11 clearly out performs it price point and is well worth the money for anyone wanting a budget system that over achieves.