In order to not blow up the “What’s in the Box” thread with impressions, I’ll post more detailed feedback in a few days in my streamer shootout thread.
Short, and initial summary is that the DDC is easily an improvement over USB alone. Blacker background and slightly tighter transients. This checks out with measurable performance of DDCs in the jitter and noise floor domains. In comparison to the ifi Zen Stream, things get closer. My initial impression (only about an hour or so of A/B listening) is that the Zen Stream has a (very very very) slightly lower noise floor, but somehow has this slight fuzziness to it (I’m talking about transients and crispness of the sound), and that the DDC bests it in this category. Both units very very good, but as of right now, I’m finding myself preferring the DDC. However, sometimes initial impressions don’t win out, so I’m going to give it a few days before making a more concrete decision on preference.