Looking for a DAC for the Squeezebox Touch

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.

Wonder if it's worth to get the Metrum Octave to connect directly to a SB3 through optical link without reclocker?
Thanks.

The Da-160 is a solid choice. Currently working on my home setup.

"Wonder if it's worth to get the Metrum Octave to connect directly to a SB3 through optical link without reclocker?"

K330,

I contacted Metrum with the same question

"While I am waiting for my Octave to arrive I have one question. Some have said that the Octave is very jitter sensitive and that a good quality reclocker between the Squeezebox Touch and the Octave will improve sound quality. Is that possible or even probable? There is so much of what I call 'Voodoo' in the audio industry and amongst audiophiles that is hard to know what to believe. I don't like wasting my money on imaginary benefits ;))

To which they replayed

"Yes there is a lot of Voodoo so be careful. As you know there was a very good reviews from 6moons and the Hificritic where the dac was compared with very expensive units (+ 10000 Euro’s) and it was very close. The Octave has a very low jitter ( below 40 pSec) so there is no need for some extra gear to reduce this. Difference in sound by this gear is mostly created by upsampling and people do not realize that this up sampling methods create ringing in the signal. This is what you hear , pre and post ringing. There is no need for such devices as you cannot create info which is not actually there so please forget such gizmo’s . Only real hig res. material improves the sound."

Bottom like for me is that I am very very skeptical about many (most) of the so called audiophile 'upgrades'. When the manufacture of the product calls upstream jitter reducers (in so many words) a waist of money, I trust them a 1000 times more then any supposed audiophile claims.

Earl