help me make sonos better

That's exactly what I'm thinking, Edgejazz. I have an email out to Monarchy to confirm that the DIP Classic will accept a 96kHz signal from the Cullen-modded Sonos. It looks like that's possible with an 'upgrade kit.'

I'll definitely report back - this is the thread that I was looking for when I started on this arcane odyssey months ago.

I can report on 'plan 1.5' as Paul layed it out above.

I have a couple ZP90's in various systems in my home. One of them has been modified by Rick Cullen. The two DACs I have at my disposal are a Peachtree Decco and a Cambridge DacMagic. With good files and good cables, I've A/B'd every combination of these components. The Cullen-modded player through the DacMagic is by far the best-performing setup I can piece together right now. Wondering about adding a Monarchy DIP now...it's the only truly incremental ($-wise) improvement I can see out there.

(Slightly OT, but is there an accepted way to link to photographs here? it saves new guys like me so much time to be able to see the objects we're talking about without having to manage a separate parallel image search.)

Pjohri, I think I'm pretty much where you want to be when you say

[I have a tube integrated Jolida and want to make my Sonos source sound at least as good as the cdp.]

Cullen mod to the Sonos, Monarchy DIP, cheap Dacmagic DAC, into an integrated Jolida. That's ~$1100 of tweakery, but it sounds wonderful with lossless files.

I should clarify that my DACs are very modest (as is the rest of my system), and that I have maybe a year's experience listening critically...that is to say, almost no experience at all in comparison with most who post here.

That said, it's my understanding that the benefits of the Cullen mod are only available at the digital outputs, so there's no way to really 'just' do the mod in lieu of adding a DAC. Gotta do both.

My thinking was that I'd like the source to be as good as it can be, and my first affordable experiment in that regard was with Cullen. I'd do it again for sure...although I'm thinking I should try the Empirical route next, if only so somebody could provide head-to-head comparison between the two. :-)

In the meanwhile, I'm free to take an incrementalist approach to swapping out other modest (~1k) DACs. But honestly, rIght now I'm trying to just chill out, listen to music, and grow into my ears. I know that my 'persistence of hearing' isn't yet accurate enough for me to discern extremely subtle differences when it takes 5 minutes to go from 'A' to 'B' while swapping out components in the chain.

Greywolf, that's on an umodified ZP80/90, is that correct?

Greywolf, I'll bet that sounds great! Looks like an incredible DAC all the way around.

Meanwhile, on the baby-step side of the equation, I added the Monarchy DIP 48/96 upsampler to my system as Edgejazz encouraged, and the results are, essentially, that I need to send him a nice bottle of scotch.

The path is now Lossless files > Cullen-modded ZP90 outputting 96kHz > Speltz IC > Monarchy upsampler (which obviously isn't doing any upsampling) > Speltz IC > Cambridge DacMagic > Jolida 302brc > Rega R5s...and it's immediately, plug-n-play clearer. More resolved, just straight-up better, right out of the box. It's unequivocal.

I'll let everything burn in and then play with some A/B comparisons, feeding it a 48k signal from an unmodified ZP90 in case the Cullen mod is dispensable, but my immediate impression of this combination is very very favorable.

Anyone reading this and considering the DIP can also factor in that I not only have a very modest system, but that I'm blessed with neither the ears, aural memory, or adjectives that most of folks here do. I'm frankly better equipped to NOT hear subtle improvements, and I certainly wouldn't hesitate to say so if this was a hair-splitting refinement that required better gear or ears to discern. But it's a sledgehammer-level improvement. Very happy here!

Hur. My understanding is that part of what the Monarchy DIP does is to boost the outgoing signal from ~0.5V to ~5.0V, giving any downstream DAC a better/stronger signal to work with.

Is that completely unrelated to the pros/cons of using the variable volume output of the Sonos?

Like Bryon, I'm using the variable output with success, although I can't say I run it over 70-75% (as indicated on the visual display). Maybe I'm just in the safe zone.