It has been about 1 month since I received the PureAudio Lotus DAC1 and during that time I have listened to and/or run it for at least 200 hours. If it needs more break in time, I couldn’t tell and while the sound did even out a little over that time, its basic character stayed pretty much the same.

The Lotus DAC1 measures out at 13Wx10Dx3H which makes it bigger then expected, but its capacious backside allows for excellent spacing between connectors. Around back you will find 5 inputs comprising USB, Coaxial, AES/EBU, Toslink, and I2S with two chunky, widely spaced output connectors. To sweeten the deal, the power supply is built in and you can use your own power cables on the IEC socket. As a special bonus, this product is made in Taiwan, for those that think there are just too many products coming from China.

Enough of the physical, now for something more meta-physical!

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You may have seen this DAC on eBay and it has all the right specs for modern music server usage. I’ve placed an order and am expecting shipment in due course.

It will go head to head with my old 16bit Aragon D2A MarkII with its all analog output stage based around transistors. Yes, the PureAudio DAC uses opamps, BUT it is a modern DAC design, and with 24bit music, it may indeed be a winner.

Stay Tuned for the review!

I believe the most important part of an audio system is the source. As they say, you can’t fix down stream what’s broken upstream. My Aragon D2A MKII is great, but I it is over 15 years old, and that’s why I went to compare it to the Bryston BDA-1.

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I’ve been a PC/Windows user since 1989, way back when you needed two people to lift some of those old IBM desktops, and storage came in 5″ floppy form. Flash forward to 2009, it’s time to add a media server to my audio/video setup, and I decided to go the easy way… which brings me to the new Apple Mac Mini!

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