Netbook to USB DAC to Headphone Amp on Batteries

Thanks for ideas so far....

Swampwalker, have you listened to the music streamer?

Re one box vs. two, I don't mind an extra box, cables and a bit of weight, but would want the performance to justify it.

I have both the Grado headphone amp and a somewhat vintage, supposedly state of the art at the time amp from the guys at Headroom - the "Cosmic" I think.

Hence, my search for a high quality portable DAC to use with either of these devices.

If either the Grado or Cosmic amp, or any of the separate box DACs are nothing to write home about, then sure - I could sell the Grado amp and just buy one of the all in one box solutions - there seems to be quite a few.

Within reason however (with respect to weight and/or cost), my priority is performance, not low cost or convenience.

Great responses. Be concerned that if you do airline travel with all these 'boxes' you will shortly be running afoul of the many new security measures that will hit travelers. The 'no lap stuff' rule will most likely ban anything you are thinking about, including the netbook. The only thing left will be the airline audio/video seat feeds. Flying will surely be a form of punishment, so you can ask your company for combat pay.

More to choose from here than I would have imagined...would love to see the results of a "shoot out" with high resolution headphones.

So a search over at HeadFi.org. There are numerous shootout threads pitting one or two of these against the other. Like here, take everything with a grain of salt...in fact, take it with more salt IMO - it is a different crowd over there, with plenty of crossover. There's a member there, Skylab, who's been doing an ongoing shootout that focuses more on the small headphone amnps, rather than the DAC's.

In general the Pico DAC and the iBasso D4 DAC are two of the most respected in the smaller offerings. I don't use a laptop interface - I simply use an LOD cable out of my iPod (older model or iPhone), into the D4 which is straped together with the iPod. The kit fits neatly with some accessories into a Lowepro Rezo 50 digitial camera bag. You didn't ask about portable headphones, and that's a whole other ball of wax.

Cw- I have the Music Streamer+ which is very nice sounding and costs about the same as the VDAC. I have not used it w headphones; I am using it to feed the digital stream from my music server to the NHT M00/S20 speakers I have in my office. I have not done any comparisons at all w the office rig, but I do believe it sounds very nice, in total.