Audiophile USB to PCM

>>the apogee is a fine DAC, from all I've heard. But, I don't think it is in the same league as the Hbrandt's $14K dCS stack.<<

I don't mean to suggest that it is, but you can go directly from the computer to the Apogee Mini-Dac via USB, you don't need anything in between. The Apogee Mini-Dac has a Re-clocking solution based on the Big Ben. So, if you use the Apogee to re-clock rather than a Big Ben, you might be able to simplify a little and have less gear between your computer and DAC. I believe the Big Ben and Mini-Dac are similar in cost.

The question is -- if you go digital to the Mini-Dac or Big Ben and Digital out, do they both re-clock the signal --- or do they only reclock if they convert from digital to analog. I don't have the answer to that.

I'm not worried about the Big Ben right now... neither the Waveterminal nor Audiophile have arrived yet.

Okay, I emailed Apogee. The Big Ben will reclock the signal and keep it in digital. The Mini-Dac will not. The Mini-Dac reclocks the signal and then converts it to analog. Afterall, it is a digital to analog converter.

Right. I wasn't implying the Big Ben could replace a DAC or PC audio device.

The Big Ben is design to act as a master digital clock in a recording studio environment. If you're running three or more pieces of digital equipment all sort of gremlins start to appear if you try to clock the devices in a chain-like manner. The Big Ben provides a very high quality master clock that all the various digital equipment can sync to. While it may work as a jitter reduction device, it probably is overkill for all but the most high end of audiophile systems. Particularly if you D/A reclocks or upsamples, the Big Ben is really not needed.