Andrew, I heard the Laminar streamer in it's infancy about 3 years ago at RMAF. It certainly has some promise, and I thought it sounded good going through a DAC 2004. However, I fear it will be grossly overpriced given the technology used. In fact at this point I am still not certain it is a finished product. I think they had one at the NY show recently and had it covered up.
I have been using a Lessloss DAC for 6 years now and find it is still hard to beat. Multi-bit DAC chips (alas nearly all are 1-bit now) and direct coupled at the output, as well as battery power on the output stage. It is well designed. Their concept of mating it with a CEC TL-51X in order to use the 256f clock output of the DAC to slave the CEC to it made a lot of sense.
With the Laminar they are taking the approach that the clock in the streamer is more important. Personally I think it's a marketing move as the DAC 2004 is no longer manufactured and they want sell streamers for use with any DAC. I believe there is also some debate about other aspects of the design and saw some comments Gordon Rankin made regarding the design approach.
In my current configuration my DAC is slaved to the clocks in the Audiophilleo USB converter that I use. While I think the sound is very good. I still wonder what I might gain if I can find a middleware solution that would allow me to slave it to the DAC. The solutions I have encountered so far use a PLL which is not necessarily optimal but gets the job done.
Keep an eye on SOtM. They were at CES and I heard their sever/DAC in the ESS Labs room. Very good and well built. I think over time they will be a leader in computer audio.
