Hey Jax -
Josh has talked about building a DAC but hasn't got to it yet. Hopefully he'll soon have the preamp finished to go with the amps I got from him. (wait until you see this preamp...;-) The next thing I want to get him to build is a phono stage... hopefully all DHT, S&B step up and RIAA trannies, battery filaments... should be impressive if he can pull it off. He was actually talking about building a dac and phono stage into one unit.. we'll see what happens. Agreed that a dac from him would be the ultimate (in my book).
Other nice ones:
the Stax X1-T is quite nice looking, the Zanden looks pretty nice too. Or how about the Wadia 790 Powerdac? those look damn cool.
-Ed