Peter: I can't give you all a demonstrator . . . I can circulate it one at a time, but I think Nick was first. If it helps the cause, it's all good. I'm just a fellow traveller on the road to computer audio excellence, as anyone who knows me will testify. The only difference is that I'm sometimes in a position to resell something I believe in - wearing two hats. When that happens, and it's being discussed, I can often chip in with information or assistance - just as you, Peter, contribute usefully to the CA forum, (usually) within CC's guidelines when your products are discussed.

If you find the card promising, you'll doubtless buy one locally - so I've nothing to gain there. There are only a handful of crazies over here in the UK who would be interested in such a thing anyway: I'm not about to get rich flogging them, but I do (personally) think they're interesting.

It's not the first time I've been called strange (though the first accusation of coming from a black hole); probably not the last. But I wasn't going to shoot it unless someone was interested.

I thought it was less spammy to invite a private conversation than posting pictures publicly - sorry.

I agree exactly with both descriptions of the improvement with the SoTM card: it just sounds like better: more 'air', cleaner LF and less hash. If you need a bigger pic, by all means PM me. I also have a demonstrator available if you wanted to borrow one to play with.

I have to declare an up-front commercial interest here because we've auditioned a lot of USB > SPDIF converters with a lot of different DACs and computers. And when I find something I really like, I then try to sell it. No disrespect to the other converters we sell (like the Halide Bridge and KingRex UC192), but John Kenny's modified HiFace sounds significantly better at that price than anything we've heard before. It's a great shame, because it's not as profitable a thing for us to sell (in fact, most dealers wouldn't touch it), but the fact stands that it performs brilliantly. I don't think it's as good as the Sonicweld Diverter, but that is the product of mad genius and costed (dis)proportionately!

Those Burson OpAmps are seriously well above the calibre of every other op-amp you can shake a stick at. I auditioned dozens in an offboard DAC recently, and the Bursons were night and day better than, for instance, dual OPA627s. As far as I'm concerned, everywhere you can put a Burson OA, put one in: they're just amazingly transformative. If all OAs sounded that good, they wouldn't have the iffy reputation!

I find it hard to believe that the Burson-ised card would just thrash similarly specified competition . . . looks like we need a UK 'bake-off'

As much of an issue as the parts spec is the power supply, though: the same people that stock the modded HD2 cards now do a linear regulated PSU for use with a Mini ITX board: http://www.itemaudio.co.uk/media_server_pc.html

I can't see anything relevant there: the Burson-modified Audiotrak HD2 is surely a whole different animal from the stock unit . . .

Then again, on the Benchmark or PS Audio DACs, it's a real to-and-fro comparison between ports: a good coax cable sounds better than a stock USB cable, but to my ears a good USB cable sounds better than both: I've heard enough to be convinced that a cheap USB cable is a significant bottleneck and that many USB implementations are judged unfairly because listeners are not factoring in the cable.

Why are there no reviews of this yet? Granted, the Onkyo 'eats the (standard) Audiotrak for breakfast', but this SE version looks like a pretty massive upgrade. Maybe it 'eats'/owns the stock Onkyo?