I have the same problem and am as yet undecided. I have tried three olders DACs from ebay all without luck. Two of them sounded so much worse than the squeezebox it was shocking. The trouble is, I have found, that an external DAC has a disadvantage compared to onboard DAC due to jitter problems in SPDIF. This is why the external dac market never really took off in the home market. As a result it may not even be possible to find a reasonably priced DAC that does a good job. I don't know yet.
The fairly expensive http://www.musicalfidelity.com/products/smlx/xdacv3.html is a modern dac with PLL jitter reduction and it gets good reviews but it's much more than a squeezebox and you are supposed to buy an exteral power suppy as well. I havn't tried it myself. If there were simple changes to the SB3 to make it better quality (eg replacing the power supply) I would be very interested. There is a web site making mods but not sure if they work. http://www.boldercables.com/servlet/Detail?no=371 -- willyhoops ------------------------------------------------------------------------ willyhoops's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10563 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35358 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
