With separates, the addition of a digital cable introduces another headache in trying to find the perfect cable that will keep up with the dac.
Ebkesq posted in 2005 that DACs at that time have eliminated with jitter. It's 2011 now, and in my experience, when a DAC has a reclocker and buffer, that's just to not introduce any jitter into the system. The marketing department will claim zero jitter, but in reality if you feed the DAC a high jitter signal it will result in sound degradation/artifacts.
Ebkesq posted in 2005 that DACs at that time have eliminated with jitter. It's 2011 now, and in my experience, when a DAC has a reclocker and buffer, that's just to not introduce any jitter into the system. The marketing department will claim zero jitter, but in reality if you feed the DAC a high jitter signal it will result in sound degradation/artifacts.