USB DACs with 24/192 via USB

well if you can’t relocate the server or just don’t want to, there are the usual ways of getting the music into the system… wireless laptop into the DAC via USB, or via an USB sound card and THEN into the ??? DAC. NOTE the shorter the USB cable there, the better.

Or you could choose one of the wireless sort of devices like the Squeeze Box, Duet, etc. and eliminate the laptop from that chain. Also, an iPhone for the remote track picking duties, or a laptop again, purely for selecting tracks or URLs.

I have my main ‘audio’ PC on my Sound Anchor rack just above the BC DAC3 and hook to it by a Stereovox BNC cable. I can interface with it in a number of ways, lengthy USB cable & USB hub for keyboard and mouse, with a small VGA LCD monitor. Or by remote desktoping into it with the laptop, or by using the HDMI output of it’s video card into my HDMI receiver to an overhead BenQ projector. I prefer to use the LCD, USB hub, and a small folding table to rest the monitor onto.

I’ve tried a fair number of approaches to get HDD based, and digital audio into my stereo. Single box CDPs, CDP + DACs, servers + laptop going USB alone, two different desktops using various sound cards and/or USB with several ASIO drivers.

My fav in the end is using my old XP Home desktop, a good PCI sound card within it, a pretty good power cord for it, the Stereovox coax cable, and the DAC3…. After all those trials.

At the “computer audiophile” website you’ll get lots more input/insights on how others have done things. Stuff like what can be done, and what can’t with USB.

The one particular thing I noticed overall at that site? I get the notion feeding a really nice DAC with a very good to excellent sound card is best. My own meager attempts seem to bare that out too…. so far anyhow. Although I am limited to only 24/96… I’m not unhappy about it. I’VE NOTICED SCANT LITTLE DIFF IN THE 24/96 TO 24/192 debate either… not enough to warrant my investing far more into a DAC which can and does decode the 192, 188, etc bit rates… I’ll just stick with the 96ers for a while more. It sounds excellent to me on my stereo…. So I’m happy now.

Good luck.

I'm playing 24/96 files (recorded from vinyl by me) via my Mac Mini to an Empirical Off Ramp to my Audio Note Kits DAC. The AN DAC does use an 18 bit chip, so it truncates, but note that 18/96 is still more than 8x the information of redbook.

This sound is incredible, close to vinyl much of the time.

Most of you guys are really too hung up on technology.

Paul, I'm sure your setup sounds amazing, and you are right that some of us, including me, are too hung up on the technology... With 24/192, you might have vinyl... ;)

I think differences between 24/96 & 192 would have to be very slight.

1st of all, it's only a difference of 2x the information.

2nd, 24/96 is really a staggering amount of information.

Then again, "hunches" and feel don't count for anything in this game.

My digital setup is far from the stratosphere of price but is really is pretty darn good. The AN DAC is the most important part, and I wouldn't trade it for any DAC with a 24 bit chip I've heard! Though eventually AN will go there.

I think differences between 24/96 & 192 would have to be very slight.

That would be my instinct as well, and I would expect that differences in implementation and quality would generally overshadow the difference in sample rate.

Compared to redbook, though, although most of us are aware that 24 bits represents a 256-fold increase in information compared to 16 bits (at least potentially), I would view the benefit of the higher sample rate (even at 96kHz) to be at least as significant, if not more so. It is probably tempting to think of it as a little more than a doubling, but I think it is best viewed in relation to the Nyquist frequency (the 40kHz minimum sampling frequency which is theoretically required to capture a 20kHz bandwidth). Redbook's 44.1kHz exceeds the Nyquist rate by about 10% (which to me has always made it seem wondrous that it works as well as it does); 96kHz exceeds it by 140%, which should make possible vastly reduced side effects from anti-aliasing and reconstruction filters.

Regards,
-- Al