adding DIP to mega changer, any difference?

Well, my two digital cables cost a combined $50 because they're home made. I used RG217 mil spec low loss coax, and I have put a ferrite clamp on the cable from the transport to the DIP to try to reduce noise from the transport from interfering with the DIP / DAC.

I concur that digital cables make a surprising difference, but I am not convinced that you have to spend a lot of money. Similarly with analogue interconnects. Twl recently posted an analogue interconnect recipe that costs approximately $1 per interconnect (plus the cost of the RCAs that you choose). And they sound amazing ... better than $200 commercial cables. I sound like a 10 10 220 commercial .. an interconnect for a buck !

Homebrew ... it's the way to go.

I have a DIP on my Sony 555ES. I concur with others that the addition of the DIP was as significant as the addition of the DAC. I will add that digital cables play a big role also. Expect to spend $500-1000 for the digital cables connecting CDP -> DIP -> DAC.

Sean's correct. The DIP made more improvement in my setup than the external DAC !! This suggests the weakest link of cheap transports is signal jitter rather than DACs or analogue outputs. My setup:
Mission PCM 7000->DIP->Monarchy 22A. This setup cost me $400 and kills my old Marantz CD67SE.

The only way that a "jitter box" such as a Monarchy DIP, etc... will work is if the player has some type of a digital output on it and you are feeding that signal into an external DAC or the DAC of a Pre / Pro or a HT receiver. It will not work on the analogue outputs ( regular left / right RCA's ). As to whether it will make a difference, i have no doubt in my mind that it will. Whether or not you like the effect will depend on personal tastes. You can expect tighter bass with greater focus but the overall sound may be a bit more "sterile" sounding. Sean
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You can get away much cheaper than DIP by feeding the analogue output into the tape input keep the cassette inside on record stand-by and feed tape output to the preamp. This way you will filter out all digital junk i.e. very and very close or even better to what DIP does.
I get much less of the listening fatigue when I transfer CDs onto the descent cassette and listen through the tap deck.