Logitech Squeezebox Touch DAC: How Good?


Logitech Squeezebox Touch's are allegedly raining out of UPS trucks into the arms of new owners, as we speak.... or as you read this ;-)

NOW, advance word is that the analog out is a huge step up from it's predessor. It's alleged to have quite a good DAC.

How good?

Those of you with some experience on this matter - please speak up! It is stomping your Berkeley DAC? Empirical? Weiss? Peachtree? Cambridge? Devilsound?

(Is it listenable?!)

The world wants to know!

Art
artmaltman
I've been using the MF VDAC and can only praise it's rich musicality. It's nearly a night and day difference. For the budget guy.
I had an Eastern Electric DAC for a couple of weeks and was able to A/B with the touch dac analogue out. Could tell little difference, although I preferred the ss over the tube output on the EE. My old Theta dac was better than both on redbook. The EE was a little better on 24/96 though than the Touch. I could survive with the Touch as my dac.
I have ripped much of my CD collection in FLAC to my hard drive and wirelessly play them through the SBT with coax into a DAC Magic. It sounds identical to my CD player and radio never sounded so good. AM and FM are crystal clear. I can now toss my CD player and my Sansui TU-717 tuner. I cannot tell any improvement in sound with or without the DAC Magic. Maybe because it and the SBT have Wolfson chips.
Been using the touch through analogue outs for about 3 months now. It is surprisingly good, and improved markedly over the first 100-150 hrs. Also, I will be bipassing the output caps as John Swenson has recommended here

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=83412

which will improve it significantly, and do the relavant Soundcheck's software mods listed here:

http://soundcheck-audio.blogspot.com/2011/01/soundchecks-squeezebox-touch-toolbox-20.html

I am not expecting to guy a dac for it as I think when the mods are done I shall find the internal dac sufficient