dac for squeezebox touch

I'm using a Wyred4Sound DAC-1 with my SB Duet. Previously had the DacMagic. The DAC-1($995) was a Major step up.

I'm leaning towards a Eastern Electric Minimax. I'm concerned about buying something without a tube option on the output stage. And the EE has great reviews and word of mouth.

I tried the currently popular Bryston DAC (borrowed from a friend). Via SPDIF it was a serious step up from the Touch in terms of detail, nuance and staging. It did sound great. However the Touch is damn nice in terms of sounding natural - nice timbre - which makes it non-trivial to beat in a meaninful way. The Bryston was clearly more of a high end sound. BTW the Bryston requires some kind of reclocking device for the USB input, per my experience with it.

As for the Eastern Electric, we shall see :-)

Art

I'm rocking the Touch with an EE Minimax DAC and am quite content with the pairing. My suggestion would be be dropping the $750 on the DAC and the remaining budget on digital modifications from Bolder Cable for the Touch.

The DAC and mods (along with a Siemens Silverplate and Wywire cables) have my digital coming much closer than it should to my 10x more expensive analog rig.