Its difficult to directly compare it to any of Empirical's current offerings since it was kind of a frankenstein box. I think that the current Off Ramp would be the best comparison. The Off Ramp has the benefits of a cleaner power supply, shoter signal chain and less data manipulation than the Modded DIP. I heard benefits of upsampling, but you can also use Foobar to do the upsampling for you. The Transit will pass along a 24/96 signal if it is fed one and Foobar will upsample and feed it. The upsampling chip in the DIP is the same as the one in the Perpetual Technologies P1A, although I believe it is a more simple application of it.
The upgrades to the DIP cost in the neighborhood of $1000 including the cost of the DIP, the Transit, the Superlock and the mods. I think this makes the Off Ramp a good bargain.
The only thing that would keep me on the DIP route is if you absolutely needed the upsampler in the DIP. Be warned though, the DIP UPSAMPLER IS UNCAPABLE OF PRODUCING 16/44.1 SIGNALS. There's only a jumper for 24/48 or 24/96. I kept it on 24/96 exclusively and only sent 16/44.1 from Foobar via ASIO4All. With software upsampling, you have the option of keeping it at 16/44.1 if you were feeding an ack or any other nonos device. I wish I could tell you if there is a difference in performance between the software and hardware upsampling, but at the time there was nothing to compare it too. I can tell you that compared to the stock transit, the modded DIP dominated over it. It was the difference between a Honda Civic and a Porsche 911.
If you're going to be feeding a Wadia DAC, I imagine that feeding it a clean, jitter free 16/44.1 signal will put you in a really good place. You can experiment with the plugins in Foobar to upsample or even do room correction after that.
