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There's a distinction to be made between encoding format and mastering quality. In practice, only one of these makes a significant difference.
The argument would have been more compelling if the OP were using some encoding format significantly short of 320kbps.
I'm not sure where you were running with that thought. If one is concerned with either of these than I would imagine they would want to remove the guess-work from the equation and use as lossless a format as possible--in this case a WAV. And since OP said they don't want to invest in marginal changes (I read this as "I don't want to spend large on little return") then I would imagine he would want to lock down all the inexpensive, but no less important things, first. To me this means ripping a CD and sticking with WAV's.
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Have you tried double blind ABX testing? Many of us at head-fi have found that when listener bias is eliminated, the differences between a wav file that came from a redbox CD and a 320K mp3 encoded with LAME from that same wav file are much less than those who have not make them out to be. Sometimes with the difference being indiscernible unless one has really expensive equipment. Doubtful that the A5s are resolving enough that the difference is worth worrying about.
Speakers are the best bet here. A $100 to $150 DAC will be more than enough, with the rest of the budget put into powered speakers or passive speakers/amp.
Christophhh, what kind of sound card do you have with your computer now?
Yes, I'm no stranger to ABX testing and definitely no stranger to the power of suggestions. I've spent innumerable hours testing and retesting equipment, making slight component-level changes and having to come to terms with the fact that sometimes you make an improvement, sometimes simply a change, and sometimes a detraction from the sound, even if that's based soley on your personal preference in sound. Much of my experience would be testing and then hearing a change I did not expect, such as suddenly hearing details in a track that I didn't even know were there when I was only listening for an increase in highs or perhaps deeper low-frequency extension.
That said, and mind you I'm not trying to make waves, but it sort of ground on my ears when you suggested speakers were where you'd see the largest benefit. If you said "the biggest changes" than I may have agreed with that. But granted all speakers sound different. Maybe I should stay out of this arena because the majority of my testing and modifications has been done using headphones so I don't have to worry about room acoustics and reflections and all the other more prominent problems associated with a set of speaker enclosures, but it still makes more sense in my mind to make sure every other portion of the audio chain is good before dropping a large sum on speakers.
I've seen the internals of the A5's and they look very decent. Changing the internals on such units would only see marginal changes. Now, I don't think think the Line-Out from a modern iMac is an example of garbage, but it's certainly not an ideal source. I would absolutely suggest a better source than the iMac on-board sound hardware.
So if OP uses CD-rips, encoded or not than I would suggest a DAC that can run at 16-bits, 44.1kHz so as to avoid any sampling changes for one thing. Even if doesn't yield a perceived difference in output, it will avoid any unnecessary processing cycles by the CPU. I would make sure any given DAC used has film capacitors in the line-out stage if it uses them at all.
I agree with Cel4145 in that you should not be spending anything over a hundred or two on a DAC. I would probably end up buying a much less-expensive unit and upgrading it's internals, but that's just me; I'm a cheapskate.
