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FWIW, some users of the the Sabre ES-9018[size=x-small]-[/size]based DAC's report issues with drop-outs in thier systems with some claiming that this chip is very sensitive to jitter (there is a thread on this on A'gon). It may be that the DI just passes on too much jitter for this chip?
In my personal experience I have used my DI with both an Eastern Electric Minimax DAC and my Havana DAC but when using the EE Minimax/DI combo, I was plagued constantly with drop-outs, the Havana not once. The DI was being fed very clean power as well.
This was with both of my pc-based systems, one an optimised down W7 netbook system, the other a Linux-based system. I had to return the Minimax (and to be honest, it was too bright-sounding for me anyway on my system to bother with trying to change the USB/SPDIF converter).
I tried my Eastern Electric Minimax with a $40 CD player via coaxial and never once did I experience a dropout. I do experience dropout with direct USB input whenever light switches in my home are on/off but not even once with Stello U3. Thus, I think that the dropout problem is more related to power than jitter.
EDIT: Not forgetting to mention that the ultra high jitterish optical output from my mac suffers zero dropout rate as well.