Small form factor, budget DACs?

Undertow,
As I understand it, when mods are done that EXCLUDE the clock mod, the modifications are (1) improving the power supplies - digital & analog, (2) upgrading coupling capacitors, (3) improving the rise & fall times of the digital output to the 1-2nS range from something much higher (like 20-30nS range) & (4) ensuring that the digital output is 75Ohms so that the power/signal transfer to the DAC module is maximized.
If you do this in a DIY fashion, you do not need to mess w/ re-attaching a Superclock3 or Tent XO, etc to the CDP, which is very specific for each CDP & can be quite a pain if there is no guidance. Doing the above mentioned mods (tho' tedious) are relatively simply to do & the parts are freely available from multiple vendors (DigiKey, Newark, Percy Audio, etc).

Yes, I have also seen people add a re-clocker unit/jitter reducer like a Monarchy DIP between the digital output & the DAC input. These type of units seem to be quite cheap esp. on the used market.
I don't know how easy it is to add a re-clocker to the DAC chassis itself - maybe there is a DIY forum where they have discussed how to interface a clock module to a digital receiver like the 8414?
Adding a separate chassis re-clocker seems to be cheaper & easier to do. The sound should improve IMHO.

There is another way stated by a few members already & a growing trend :- use a PC hard-drive as your transport & a sound card to put the data out on a USB port. People like Scott Nixon & Wavelength Audio & Headroom are producing USB DACs to enable this.
Then, you do not have to deal w/ this jitter issue 'cuz you rip the CD to your hard-drive & the sound-card (which has a high quality clock + digital buffer) feeds the DAC.

If you are willing to spend money to upgrade your CDP transport, re-channel that same money into getting a plug-in sound card for your PC, a USB cable & exchanging your DAC to one having a USB input port.

Interesting... I got a little lost on the Re-attaching the XO or superclock, I was looking not to purchase these in the transport and just use the cheap osillator or whatever in there? And ad the better clock in the dac, I am not really completly looking to do this but this is something I have seen done, so upgrading everything but the clock in a CD player used primarily as a transport would be a good idea or not without the clock? Thanks

>> 04-05-06: Undertow
>> I got a little lost on the Re-attaching the XO or
>> superclock,
look at this page
http://www.tentlabs.com/Support/Support.html
click on "XO 2 and 3" to read the mounting instructions to understand what I'm talking about.

>> so upgrading everything but the clock in a CD player
>> used primarily as a transport would be a good idea or
>> not without the clock?
good idea (if you don't want to go the PC route).

Hudsonhawk, I've owned the Bel Canto 1.1, Ack dAck 2.0, Kora Hermes 1 and Audio Mirror D1. Of them, my favorite is the Audio Mirror, for the reasons cited previously, their organic sound. I also felt the Audio Mirror was more dynamic with a greater sense of scale than either the Bel Canto and especially the Ack which to me sounded small. The Audio Mirror couldn't match the lucid midrange of the tubed Kora, but it comes close. And with all its other attributes is an amazing bargain at under $550.

Long-dead thread, but since there was some question as to the difference between the two versions of the DAC-AH (the stock one and Pacific Valve's modded version) I thought I'd let people know that I wrote a review / comparison between the two models.

Pacific Valve was kind enough to let me borrow the stock one for comparison.