A good dac costs a minimum of £3000

[SimontY]

No harm done

[Themis]

Thanks Simon.

[Marco]

It makes sense but the point I was making is that as a rule the best supplies use larger transformers, larger rectifier diodes (arguably), larger smoothing caps, more complex regulation and more supplies separate from one another. Then you may have CLCLC type filters, which can be massive. You may also have large film caps in the psu. All these things are big.

Obviously you can take a great voltage regulator board made with SMD parts and it'll be no bigger than a standard 78xx/78xx or LM317/337 but it's the same size at best. I can't think of many occasions where you could upgrade AND make the supply and regulation stages smaller...

I agree, Simon. The example I was thinking of was in the case of, say, output and mains transformers on a valve amp: a smaller high quality, hand-wound, transformer could be superior to an inferior, albeit bigger, 'off-the-shelf' unit. Of course, much depends on implementation and the particular requirements of the circuit that's going to be used

Marco.