I have tweaked the DAC1 like crazy, each little tweak gave big improvements. I have bypassed the fuses, used Nordost Valkyrja DC wiring, separately isolated the Toroidal transformer outside the chassis on Magix (crazy HUGE improvement in low-level detail!), jammed the inside full of ERS Paper, covered the outside with ERS Paper, wrapped Toroid with ERS Paper too! Bypassed input AC wiring of Toroid with 5cm Valhalla and plugged it into power strip. The signal path was crazy short and it gave huge improvements, but it's still not as good as EMU0404 USB in a direct comparison. With DAC1 the low-level details are cut off and it sounds veiled.
The pre-amp of DAC1 is equal to Foobar volume control, there is only a flavor difference; DAC1 veils/blurs the low-level details (boomy bass) while Foobar removes them which makes it sound edgy and empty. The best volume control I have ever tried is the one inside dCS, it's like Foobar volume control except it doesn't reduce the low-level detail! That's the only reason I bought the dCS, because of the volume control. However, I didn't realize that the wattage draw of the dCS makes it worse overall. It doesn't matter how perfect the source is, if it adds problems into the rest of the system it will be worse.
The dCS is only better when using a dedicated AC line for it AND optical connection between transport and DAC, then it's completely isolated from electrical noise. I boosted up the wattage of my desktop transport and it didn't affect the audio system at all, dedicated AC line and optical is the way to go, however, Toslink is not perfect, something new must be invented.
I found that dCS DAC + Toslink + computer was equal to dCS DAC + Firewire + dCS transport. The Toslink computer sounded silky smooth but empty, the dCS stack sounded full but with electrical noise added on top of the music.
Using electrical connection gave extra layers of low-level detail, but the electrical noise masked those layers, I found that after I lowered the wattage the improvement in low-level detail was crazy!
Low wattage/low weight components are more sensitive to vibration and AC power so those need to be fixed first. Big and heavy metal chassis dampens vibrations and a big power supply cleans AC noise, but IME they just blur the sound.
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