Thanks for your reply Marscay, very useful.

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought the 7520 was the same as the 7510 with a phono out and USB connection?

The whole modding thing is difficult to stack, as obviously the DACMagic can get modded as well, but the advantage of the Caiman is it requires no further expenditure beyond the basic unit.

I take your point with following numbers, a DAC can have awesome specs but sound dry as hell. I didn't get on with the Benchmark DAC1 personally, and I'm definitely in the minority there. However I do have a pretty revealing system so there is a real drop in resolution I will definitely notice it.

I wonder if there is there anyone who has heard the DACMagic and the Caiman running side by side who can comment further?

Quote Originally Posted by marscay View Post
I used a DACMagic for a week and i compared it to a 7510 that i also had, there wasn't much in it but the DACMagic had more detail although it sounded a little thin to me.

There is not much doubt to me that the 7520 is a better DAC than the DACMagic imo however and once you add some better opamps it is clearly a better performer and the 'Caiman' improves on the 7520 again by quite a bit.

You can't really go by SNR numbers and the like, some of the enthausiast soundcards (Xonar/Auzentech) have good DAC's and decent specs but they still don't cut the mustard for me.