DAC significantly better than a w4s DAC2-DSDse?

Re: no pre-amp. Steve N: How do you handle volume control? Do you throw away bits to lower volume or do you attenuate the analog signal? Has anyone done an A/B of your DAC against a good pre at low listening levels?

I initially bought the w4s to use w/o a pre, but it discards bits to lower the volume. Music (to my ear) sounded better at quiet listening with the pass. But no guarantees it wasn't the placebo effect.

ZD542: I found configuring linux for bit-perfect relatively straightfoward for older versions of linux, where the machine was dedicated to just serving music. There are many threads on doing so if you search for "bit-perfect audio linux". The main high bit is to use mpd and configure it so send bits raw to the USB dac.

With that said, I tried to configure things w/o mpd on a multi-use linux and just managed to screw up the box. (This is probably b/c I removed pulseaudio and then messed up various configurations.)

I'm about to build a "silent" server that uses an SSD disk and no fan, so will have to reconfig everything again, so can let you know how that goes.

There are some great DAC contenders in this Audiogon thread, so this might be a useful information.

Thanks Alex. I'd posted this b/c that thread muddied the waters enough I wasn't sure what to get.

Ideally I was looking for anyone that heard the new W4S + DSDse upgrades and thought another DAC sounded "better".

Were there any of the USB / async / XLR DACs in that thread that you particularly liked?

Steve --- sorry somehow I missed your response. Will your player work with Linux? Also, what's the return policy? (I searched around for awhile but seem to be missing it.)