I got an Adcom DAC last year, my first exposure to outboards ...it was a 1996 vintage , large but very smooth .. now getting a little long in the tooth, but enjoyable.
Have a bud on the forum (knew him long before discovering LHF) , who is very audio knowledgeable. So I talked to him a couple of months back and he was babbling on and on abt a new DAC he's bought ...a cheap, Chinese DAC called a "Mini Muse" ...its 24bit/192 khz with inputs for optical, coax and USB . Even has headphone outputs.
He had bought his for $100 + shipping and was bowled over that now they were $50, including shipping. Well, Dan has never misguided me so I took a gamble. sold the Adcom for $175 and ordered up a Mini Muse ...sure its not a Bryston or Bel Canto etc, but looked like fun
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MUSE-Mini-24...item3378feef08
I figured that I'd get a cheap Chinese DAC that might have some potential ...had always heard that USB to a DAC did not produce good result.
Well it came yesterday and I installed it today ...Windows 7 saw it, installed drivers and we were off to the races ...WOW , sure there are much better out there, but this is a huge "Bang for the Buck" . USB produced sparkling highs (had to reduce treb on the preamp by 1 click) and very solid mids and bass ... I was understanding lyrics that had been missed before ...can't wait to try it on better source than the MP3's that were handy. May end up ordering a second one for the desktop PC.
Build quality seems VG , shipping from China was abt 2 weeks , setup was abt 3 minutes and my smile has been going on abt 2 hours now ...