Best streamer for Audio Note UK dacs

Ha! If Peter Qvordrup were dead he'd be rolling in his grave! Audio Note builds their dacs very intentionally to avoid all that! Read up on their design philosophy ... It's pretty interesting. And I for one would never argue with the incredible result. Doing what you suggest I imagine would ruin the sound ;)

Avoid what? They used the best chip available at the time. It does have particular sonic signature. I'd say modern AKM with Velvet Sound would be a good replacement. It is same technology, not Delta-Sigma as ESS. The problem is to find AKM board with good quality parts and not op amps or cheap caps.

It would be an interesting experiment for someone handy with electronics to feed ANK analog part with signal from decent AKM DAC like RME, taking signal before RME filters, just raw DAC output.

I am handy, maybe some day I will take on this...

OP - keep in mind, when you use SPDIF input on your dac, the better the clock is in your transport the better the sound quality. Look for a streamer that’s optimized for SPDIF with OCXO clock. A used Aurender N10 or N20 will be a good match.
Alternative is to buy a high quality reclocker with OCXO clock to reclock USB to SPDIF. 

Yes audphile1, I had been thinking about adding a clock to my current Innuous Zen. And I believe the Grimm mu-1 has a very sophisticated clock and is optimized for spdif output. So I'm  definitely heading that direction one way or another. I don't know much about aurender but I'm going to read up on them. 

Thanks

Streamer: Aavik S-180  ($7000)

At a later date, i.e., if you think there may be a better dac out there...get the

DAC: Aavik D-180 ( $7000)

It will sound way more 'real' and give you everything in the music that the Audionote dac robbed all these years.