Optimizing signal paths is a fine idea in principle, but it's usually not good to string components up in the air like that... there is quite a risk of them becoming antennas, and as far as decoupling caps are concerned, they become quite ineffective as you move them further from the pins they're decoupling, even by a couple mm. It would be a good idea to look at the noise floor with a good quality sound card and an FFT tool to verify these kinds of changes. You may be able to squeeze out a half a db here or there, but it's ridiculous to think you're going to get it to perform anywhere near the level of a Transporter. Besdies the DAC and power supplies being inherently not capable of it, at that point you would be dealing with a noise floor of a couple _micro_volts, and this style of hand wiring just does not fly.
Could the layout in SB3 be improved? I would think yes, but you can't really get there like this. You should have a crack at building a standalone DAC - it is far more feasible to create an optimal design when you are not limited to making hand-wired tweaks to an existing board. -- seanadams ------------------------------------------------------------------------ seanadams's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=42840 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
