Well, my lovely Onyx Artist 1-2 is not powering up consistently, so it's time to look for a new DAC for the Box of No Return .  I did a mid-deep survey last night, and am fascinated at the newly large category of "headphone amplifiers", all of them USB2 or 3 and usually driverless, some of them bluetooth, several of them (e.g., this FiiO, this Fosi, many others) advertising bluetooth 4.2 or 5.0 and 384kHz max sampling rates and four or five codecs I had never heard of. I'd like to spend vaguely US$100, am willing to consider higher. I prefer dual 1/4" mono phone jack outs, or single or dual XLR; the Peavey USB-P would be great if it were 96kHz; but the "headphone amplifier" category clearly goes for 1/8" stereo, not my favorite because they wear out so easily.

I'd love to go 96kHz bluetooth if it's solid under Linux with JACK, but my impressions thus far is that that may be a path fraught with peril :-) I don't actually need minimum latency, I do need high reliability. Experiences anyone? Thoughts and recommends?

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