Logitech Squeezebox Touch DAC: How Good?


Logitech Squeezebox Touch's are allegedly raining out of UPS trucks into the arms of new owners, as we speak.... or as you read this ;-)

NOW, advance word is that the analog out is a huge step up from it's predessor. It's alleged to have quite a good DAC.

How good?

Those of you with some experience on this matter - please speak up! It is stomping your Berkeley DAC? Empirical? Weiss? Peachtree? Cambridge? Devilsound?

(Is it listenable?!)

The world wants to know!

Art
artmaltman
I had an Eastern Electric DAC for a couple of weeks and was able to A/B with the touch dac analogue out. Could tell little difference, although I preferred the ss over the tube output on the EE. My old Theta dac was better than both on redbook. The EE was a little better on 24/96 though than the Touch. I could survive with the Touch as my dac.
I have ripped much of my CD collection in FLAC to my hard drive and wirelessly play them through the SBT with coax into a DAC Magic. It sounds identical to my CD player and radio never sounded so good. AM and FM are crystal clear. I can now toss my CD player and my Sansui TU-717 tuner. I cannot tell any improvement in sound with or without the DAC Magic. Maybe because it and the SBT have Wolfson chips.
Been using the touch through analogue outs for about 3 months now. It is surprisingly good, and improved markedly over the first 100-150 hrs. Also, I will be bipassing the output caps as John Swenson has recommended here

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=83412

which will improve it significantly, and do the relavant Soundcheck's software mods listed here:

http://soundcheck-audio.blogspot.com/2011/01/soundchecks-squeezebox-touch-toolbox-20.html

I am not expecting to guy a dac for it as I think when the mods are done I shall find the internal dac sufficient