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.

gopher, have you directly compared the touch's analog outs with that of the minimax?