Lindisfarne, I don't know about Antelope but I use Benchmark DAC1 with Airport Express + Mac Mini + Itunes (ALAC). Benchmark DAC1 offers jitter suppression and is very clean/transparent with tight bass. It was designed to be neutral and not warm. It gave me some brightness with aluminum dome Paradigm Studio/60 v2 speakers but it is just perfect with warm sounding Hyperions HPS-938. This way or another you need jitter suppression. Perhaps additional reclocker would give you freedom of DAC choice in the future (including NOS DACs). Jitter manifest itself as a noise proportional to signal level while Benchmark sound is as clean as it gets. In fact many complained that it is too clean (analytical, sterile itp.) In one studio test it came as most accurate but not the favorite one. It takes time to adjust to different sound but now I really enjoy it. Many people on this forum praised Antelope DAC.
Benchmark or Antelope?
Looking at these two (2) DACs and asking for some opinions from the student body. Will be used in a "Mac" environment. As an aside, I've heard really good things about Mytek, but it looks like "drivers" need to be fiddled with and that is a turn-off for me. I'm at the 1500 dollar (new)
price point and the referenced units come in around that figure.
price point and the referenced units come in around that figure.