DAC for Olive musica

If you want a DIY DAC a good choice is the Rakk Dac from K&K Audio. I am currently using one with a Musica with Great results. http://www.kandkaudio.com/
I am also using one with the DEQX 2.6p which is a little more than a DAC but I am getting good results from it as well.

I know it's been discussed before, but how about the benchmark vs. the audio mirror. They are very different animals, but for my use with the olive which is preferred. I doubt the olive will have the finest transport mechanism so are upsampling and jitter control an important issue?

The point of the transport on the Olive is to make a copy of your CD onto the hard drive, not to play CDs directly from the transport. Using hard drive, in theory, is much better than a CD transport in terms of noise. HD proponents claim that it is better than any CD transport out there, no matter the cost. For us that's the most important aspect of HD based music servers, besides the unbridled convenience of accessing all of your CD collection in a matter of seconds. Long as your DAC has a USB connection, you can play directly from the HD. "That's all I have to say about that." - Forest Gump.

The Olive units use a rca type dig. out connector so any dac can be used! The usb connections (2) are for adding outboard HD's...

I run my Olive Opus 3 aka musica through a tube audio designs TADAC and love the sound. It sounds better than my current audiphile grade CD player.