DAC's for under $400 ??

[Feanor]

I also found another entrant into the Budget USB DAC category.

The Musiland LILO on 'sale' for $99

The downside (for me) is that this DAC needs drivers installed on the PC and are not available for the Mac OS, that I can tell.

Other than that, looks like a contender.

Given DSP capability and need for drivers, the LILO is really an external sound card, i.e. more than just a DAC. In that regard it's like my M-Audio Audiophile USB.

Having its own drivers isn't entirely a bad thing in that proprietary drivers can be designed to by-pass dubious O/S "audio stack" components, e.g. WinXP's notorious KMixer. So in case of my M-Audio, I specify the ASIO driver in my player, (Foobar2000).