Dedicated USB DAC/Headphone Amp for iPod

[steerr]

I’m currently using an iPod Classic 160GB with a Fiio E1 headphone amplifier and AKG K550 headphones as my main source of Hi-Fi. Over 90% of my music has been ripped using Apple Lossless and I’m fairly happy with the overall sound and to be honest the iPods DAC does a fairly decent job. However, I’m curious to know if adding a dedicated USB DAC/Headphone amp will improve the sound quality enough to justify the additional expense? I have been looking at Furutech ADL GT40, Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus, Fiio E7. Ideally the set-up needs to be desktop based so any other suggestions welcome. My budget is £500. Thanks

 

[eggontoast]

I think that the only available seperate headphone amp/DAC which takes a digital output from your iPod is the HP-P1 . All the others you mention would just take an analogue line output from the Pod.

EDIT Just found this thread too