khkenny

The $995 one is the original stock version straight from the workbench of Jerry Ozmet. He originally made his DACs only with single-ended outputs because they sounded the best to him -- one only needs to trace back the accolade and reception of his 24MXL DAC to see that they were also single-ended. Subsequently, a few owners took their AL 34MXL DACs to third-party upgrade service providers for transplants and other massive internal reconfigurations, adding balanced outputs which required an additional pair of coupling caps. They also decided to spend quite a bit on transformers of various metallurgy. Some even took things to the extreme as evidenced by the pics shown on this thread. Modern DACs have their conveniences. And they are also mass produced in other countries with cheaper labor -- the bulk production volume and cheap labor cost enable DACs to be had for less than a bottle of decent wine these days . Mr. Ozmet was a digital guru in his days and his DAC circuitry is still vastly respected as a canon and an icon even today. In terms of sound quality, it's all about different cup of tea for different folks. Ask why many still die for NOS DACs using the venerable Philips TDA1541 or for old Western Electric tubes and sometimes the modernity of products produced today lacks something special from the past. The Audio Logic DACs are in a totally different and higher league than the dacmagics and the lot.