Which Nixon dac â€“ usbtd or usbchibi, tubed or not?

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[Iâ€™m also posting this on the PC Audio asylum]
The reviews and price have made the Scott Nixon USBtd dac the one I think I want to buy. However, I read on the SN site that his Chibi dac is the same as his Tube dac except that thereâ€™s no tube buffer, and the chibi is about half the price of the tubedac. So, which one?
Note that the rest of my system is tubed, so Iâ€™m wondering if I really need the tube buffer on the dac. On the other hand, if the chibi uses an opamp, I might be better off with the tube buffer?
One other bit of info that may be relevant: my preamp, a modded Melos SHA-Gold, has both an active linestage and a passive linestage, and I use the passive linestage because itâ€™s more transparent. But I read on AA that itâ€™s not â€œtrulyâ€ passive in that itâ€™s actually cathode-follower-coupled to improve impedance matching. In any case, I donâ€™t know what the impedances of the preamp and amps are (amps are VTL 100w mb, if that helps).

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Topic - Which Nixon dac â€“ usbtd or usbchibi, tubed or not? - Tom Tripp 09:25:47 06/03/06 (2)

Re: Which Nixon dac â€“ usbtd or usbchibi, tubed or not? - boead 12:14:02 06/03/06 (1)

Thanks - this is helpful *nt* - Tom Tripp 07:22:20 06/06/06 (0)

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