Wolfit:Can't explain it ... the dacx has excellent specs and sounds fine to me.. may be the optical out from the mac mini - the Chord dac is considerably more expensive - I really don'y obsess about jitter - the dac x is supposed to have a very good clock.
that's my point, the optical out of the mini could have high jitter and, if it does, i don't think the dacx handles this incoming jitter well. i guess what i'm saying is if you like the sound of the dacx, don't assume it will sound the same on a mac mini. i've tried 6 different dacs on my mac, from the cheapest beresford to my chord, and the cyrus was the only one that sounded worse on it, compared to a cd transport.