USB DA recommendation needed

Thanks for the responses!

To clarify....
I have th firewire version of the audiophile and I am getting a lot of kernel panics. From the crash logs its pretty clear that its due to the m-audio drivers. I reinstalled the OS (10.3.2 and 10.3.3) and no change. I have nothing else installed.

Do you need drivers to use the USB version??

In addition, while it works with iTunes it doesnt work with some other apps (such as mplayer for watching movies).

Also, it often doen not work after sleep (and give kernel panics then...).
So its definetly not a card you can forget about.... maybe the drivers improve, but maybe not..

The apogee sounds great, but is a bit out of my range. i was looking at the <$300. My system is not that high end... :-)

I kind of like the idea of going 2 step (tos-links/spdif -> DAC) maybe if I can find a theta or another dac reasonably cheap.....

How do the stereolink and the sonica sound compared to the theta ? I guess I could live with the sonica for now until a "deal" on a theta pops up.

Anybody have any listening experience with the ESI waveterminal:
http://www.esi-pro.com/viewProduct.php?pid=10&page=1
or the Edirols ?

thanks!

To my ears, the combination of the Theta and the MAudio Sonica sounds better than the Stereolink. My setup is actually sounding a bit worse right now, b/c I just moved the stereo across the office, and with some other changes, now have PC -> MAudio Sonica USB to toslink converter -> 36' of toslink -> MAudio C02 toslink to digital coax converter -> Theta. I just posted a Q in another thread--I'm looking for insights into whether I'd be better off with 36' of USB or some other device that is USB->coax digital and a long coax digital run...

My M-Audio USB Audiophile came with a driver that had to be installed before the computer would recognize it.

The squeezebox from slimdevices.com is worth a look. It doesn't have a USB input port but it does have both Ethernet and WLAN interfaces, which will allow for remote connectivity to your server-based jukebox. It can play a wide variety of digital formats including uncompressed PCM. The S/PDIF output will allow you to bypass the builtin DAC, and use one of your choice.

I don't have personal experience with this device. However, I'd guess that RFI and jitter might be the two main issues.

the squeezebox looks interesting!
However, since I use the screen of, my cube to watch DVD's I cannot ban it from the living room. Thus wirelss is not needed, but maybe I get one for the bedroom!
I am leaning towards the 2 step solution (sonica-dac) or waiting for deals on the apogee :-)
A couple questions:
Did you ahve problems before with short cables going into the DAC?
Does the Sonica work without drivers ?
I know nothing about DACs. what is preferred, coax (s/pdif is guess), optical ? What use one is good for the $?

Thanks!