What the benifit of using a separate dac?

Blindjim - I don't get the connection to motorcycle performance mods aimed at boosting torque and HP for faster lap times. Those are mods easily measured by a mechanical (objective) device. Humans are not objective. Music is emotional. You can chart brainwaves, pulse rate, skin temp, finger movements, etc. But what all that actually translates to an individual cannot be quantified or experienced by anyone else. If you wanted to find a parallel in motorcyle performance mods, I would say it is more akin to mods to suspension, chassis, rubber, frame geometry - those things that are specifically tailored to an individuals preferences and riding style. If you ride you know that dyno charts do not tell you the whole story about how a bike will take you around a course. Even with the closer metaphor I would still say that the reproduction of music in your home is an emotionally charged experience and cannot be quantified by charts and numbers.

Isn't there a book about this - something like "Zen and the Art of Audio Equipment Maintenance"?

Why mod?? I think it only makes sense when you have a well made and properly designed circuit where the manufacturer used sufficent components. Impovement can be made substituting better sonic quality components. Of course this is a topic with all kinds of qualifiers....but in my experience it has been a good one and well worth it.

Wave & Jacks

My point from the onset is or was to illuminate further the curious lack of objective press reviews on the outcomes of after market mods of audio gear.

To that end, both courses of action before the facts were for proposed advantages or increases to performance. One being a scooter, the latter our audio apparatus.

The bike upgrades had better representation via the industry press. The theme here is tantamount to the same province, "imcreasing performance or improvements" via the same sort of after market enhancements... albeit without the same publicized notoriety.

I subscribed to, bought, and utilized those speculative hot rod modifications costing me thousands then due primarily to the coverage the industry press printed about them, by and large.

My last statement pointed to just that item… mo’ press from non invested reviews would lessen the leap of faith required to pursue these measures.

Sorry if it wasn’t clearer.

I’m not haranguing audio modifiers here but merely pointing out a viably solid path to quell reticence, or eliminate it altogether from the minds of those seriously interested in attaining said levels of augmentation

As for myself, I’m thinking to ask for a couple grand or more with but a subjective promise up front could well be fortified still further by such credible monologues ….

Truth be told, I find it curious such accounts aren’t ongoing and at least the now and then sorts.

Blindjim - just to toss monkey wrench: Empirical Audio converts upsampling jitter rejecting DAC (Benchmark DAC1) to NOS non-jitter rejecting DAC (plus other improvements) -you might be sorry with cheap transport and cable. I'm pretty sure Steve from Empirical Audio advices customers but others might not. The point is that modds sometimes can change functionality/make it worse and customer has to be informed.

I even suspect that some mods might introduce a little of harmonic distortions that Benchmark is free of to make sound more lively and less sterile (less clean).