What Digital to Digital Converter Do You Use? Why?

I use the DACs built into Hypex FA-series Ncore plate amps. Because those preamp/DSP/amps do it all in one unit (per stereo channel), are built into a a pair of OB-subs (one plate mounted in each). Allows active crossover and filtering of main speakers and subs while minimizing gear/racks/cables. DIY lifestyle system leaving only the sources visible. Also relatively inexpensive, leaving budget for other things that have greater impact - for me, room acoustics.

If you're dead-set on the best DAC, follow along with Gabster (YouTube) and build your own ultra-capacitor based unit.

I'm upgrading my DDC in a month.

Have decided on the Audio GD DI-20HE. Have a few mods booked in for it in the UK before I receive it.

I use Audio GD Di 20 HE too.  Did wonders to clean the USB output from an Innuos server.  Stayed on for a month for burn in, but got even better with an external clock from AfterDark and a good BNC cable.

Now waiting to demo a Melco S10 and an Antipodes Oladra to check if they are really better by a significant margin.

I would never use usb. I won’t use any tweaks to try to get better performance from usb. I use Ethernet and i2s to my dac, and my dac is fpga based.

+1 for Matrix X-SPDIF 2

I don’t necessarily think that I2S will always bring an improvement over USB for any given device. However, in this case it provided noticeable improvement in SQ.

The unit has three dip switches:

1. MCLK
2. IIS Reverse
3. DoP to Native

My setup:

Sonic Orbiter Roon Core i5 (Upsampling) > Ethernet (switch) > ifi Zen stream + MCRU LPS > USB > Matrix Audio X-SPDIF 2 > I2S > Wyred4Sound DAC-2v2SE

I’m using a AudioQuest Forest 48 0.75m HDMI Cable. I’d rather have a shorter cable but it seems to work well.

I’m also powering the Matrix X-SPIDF 2 off the Zen Streams USB instead of the wall wart. So far, so good.