How would you improve the sound of Squeezebox?

At RMAF07 I heard the SB in Dan Wright's room (ModWright is his company's name). The SB was modified to have a tube o/p stage (that's for the analog o/ps). I'm sure that Dan knows how to mod the SB digital o/ps to get lower jitter.
A 2nd person who might do similar mods is Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio.
Contact these 2 fellows & visit their websites for possibly more info.

Bolder Cable does a digital mod to the SB3 that has been well reviewed. Also, the other mod that seems to be popular with the SB3 is to upgrade the power supply. Again, Bolder does this and CI Audio sells a nifty looking separate power supply for the SB3. I have an unmodded SB3, but if I were going to seek improvements this is where I would start. I suggest going to the Bolder Cable and CI Audio forums over at Audio Cirlces for more info.

To Wireless200,
It is much to my surprise that the SB is 85% of the Apollo in terms of SQ. I was considering getting the Apollo as well, thinking it would be a big improvement over the SB. But now guess I shouldn't get my expectations too high... Also to my surprise is the Transporter is inferior than the Apollo in your case, considering it is double the price of the Apollo. But I will see when I get mine.

To Cerrot,
I do think the peripherals for your SB have something to do with its SQ. In fact, this is exactly the reason why I posted this thread - to add the right peripherals to the SB in order to maximize the SQ of a SB as much as possible.

To Cruz123,
I just looked at Bolder Cable's website, and their mods do not really attack the jitter issues, as they do nothing with clocking/reclocking. But I think the digital mod still looks worthwhile. I looked at Empirical Audio's website as well, while they don't currently have any mods for SB, they do have the Pace-Car to reclock signals out of SB, not exactly cheap though. How about Bold Cable's Digital Mod + E.A. Pace-Car? would be a big step up from the stock SB digital output. What do you guys think? or is anyone already doing this?

The Pace-Car is certainly interesting, but seems like it could be overkill given the price point. You may want to try a Monarchy DIP 48/96 upsampler as a lower cost alternative. See http://www.monarchyaudio.com/. Your post reminded me that I have one of these in storage. I'll pull it out and see if I can notice any improvement.

Amaggie05 wrote:
"How about Bolder Cable's Digital Mod + E.A. Pace-Car?"

Modding the SB3 would be a waste of good money if it's feeding a Pace-Car. The jitter coming into the Pace-Car is not really important. The clock is replaced with a local free-running clock inside the Pace-Car. If the Pace-Car is fed with SB3, Apple TV, AirPort Express or Sonos, they all sound identical, modded or unmodded.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio