USB DA recommendation needed

Update -- Bought an Apogee USB Mini-Dac. This is waaaay better than the M-Audio Audiophile! The M-Audio introduced time smear. Apogee has a better clock solution, smear is gone, full, rich, detailed sound, deep wide holographic sound stage -- I've found what I'm looking for! The Apogee cost $976, which is about five times what the M-Audio USB DAC cost, but I couldn't be happy with the M-Audio DAC -- I am really pleased with the sound of the Apogee. You can go from your computer, to the Apogee, to your amp or powered speakers --- no need for a pre-amp.

Rsbeck, does it have SPDIF out to connect to a standalone DAC?

Yes, the Apogee, like the M-Audio, has an SPDiF out. I tried using the SPDiF out on the M-Audio, plugging it into a digital input on my Proceed AVP2 and it did not sound good, which is surprising since the Proceed has very good DAC's and usually makes low end gear sound much better. I haven't tried the SPDiF out on the Apogee yet. I've been listening to it non-stop since I got it on Monday. Today, I plugged the balanced XLR outputs into my Levinson mono-blocks and into my Monitor Audio Studio 60's -- sounds great! The G4 and Apogee make a really satisfying front end. Musical as hell, the imaging is really delightful, I find myself glued to it. I am now going to rip my entire 1,000+ CD collection to an external hard drive, uncompressed, and use this for high quality casual listening in the family room. Convenience with very little compromise!

Hey Rsbeck, can you watch DVDs (Dolby Digital or DTS sound) through your Mac and Apogee Mini-DAC?

For DD and DTS, I believe you'll need a different type of sound card. You can connect a Mac G4 powerbook to some types of displays and watch DVD's and you can play the sound through the Apogee DAC in two-channel, but for multi-channel, DD, DTS, etc -- you'll need a different kind of DAC.