I saw your pm , unfortunately I'm not trusted with the ability to reply on pm so I'm gonna post some of my impressions of the very excellent soulnote d-2 dac with the external clock x-3 !
As you all can see on my system page I did pair it with innuos pulsar trough Shunyata sigma usb and I've got no plans on changes in the foreseeable future.
To make it simple, you need to spend alot more to find better but it's very dependent on what you feed it with as in every case. ( if I had the funds A zenith NG with phenix lite card would take the place of the pulsar)
I've compared my dac to chord dave and still preferred the d2 but that maybe a matter of taste, I have tested it against top models from denafrips and they are not even close. I might end up with nagra or dcs or something else in the future but for now...
And yes the the external clock really makes a big difference!