Looking for a DAC for the Squeezebox Touch


I'm new to digital since buying a Squeezebox Touch a few months ago. The Touch is connected to an external USB hard drive that contains cd ripped Flac files. I'm looking to buy a DAC for around $1k from the SB Touch and connect it to my Sim I-7. I'm considering the Moon 100D and the Wyred4sound Dac1 based on some reviews and comments in various forums. I might consider increasing my budget to possibly the 300D and Dac2 if it would make a substantial difference.
128x128ronrags
I like how the guys at Burson design their gear around the true analog sound, adding the DA-160 would make a nice mix between analog and digital. Have a listen to it if you have a retailer near.
+1 on the Metrum Octave...doing wonders in my system Logitech Transporter > Shindo Masseto/Cortese.
All stock...most of the Modwright mods impact the analog outputs which are pointless if taking it out to an external DAC. The Transporter is known for it's ultra low jitter so I don't feel the need to add an external clock source either although i'd give an Empirical Audio Offramp or other clock a try to see if there was a large enough improvement to consider. The Transporter does have a word clock input.
"In doing my research I soon realized that most people involved with primarily digital audio setups are on a different better or worse scale than the analog side. You can usually trust the, "it sounds better," remark, but I found just how much better is much less than analog."

Agree there is a much larger difference in sound quality in practice between the best and worse analog setups out there compared to CD/digital.

With digital, improvements with the digital source alone may be quite marginal at some point with greatly diminishing returns. Unless you are rolling in cash, I recommend doing the homework and starting with a well received sub $1000 DAC and see where that gets you compared to say any high end reference systems out there that you might have access to for comparison.