Audiophile USB to PCM

I'm using an M audio Firewire Audiophile. It sounds quite good, but it has some quirky volume problems. They are supposed to address this in a future firmware upgrade, but until they do that, I can not recommend it.

Yes, I'm using the Mini-Dac as a DAC. I'm running USB from the Mac G4 laptop to the Apogee, then balanced XLR interconnects to a pair of Mackie HR824's --- I'm pretty astounded at the quality. I don't know that you need to convert the digital signal from your laptop to PCM in order to run it with your dCS gear. I could be wrong, but I believe you just need to keep it in digital since your dCS gear probably doesn't have a USB input, you need something between your laptop and dCS, something to connect them while keeping the signal in digital. I tried that with an input of a Proceed AVP2 so I could use the DAC in the Proceed. For some reason, it didn't sound that good. Only thing I can figure is that something in the M-Audio piece was degrading the signal somehow. Everything sounded time smeared. I'm going to guess that you could use the Apogee similarly and it would sound way better. I know the Apogee has a better clock/buffer which helps eliminate jitter, so maybe the signal was getting smeared by going through the M-Audio piece even though I didn't use it for DA conversion. When I get some time, I will experiment with the Apogee, connecting to the laptop with USB and taking an SPDiF out of the Apogee to the digital input of the Proceed and see if there's a huge improvement, as I expect, over the M-Audio piece. There may be a less expensive piece that will handle the transer and keep the signal in digital while eliminating jitter and smear for less money -- if there is, I'd like to know about it. In the meantime, I can tell you that the Apogee sounds great in my application.

Here is something that will take a USB input from your computer and convert it to toslink or SPDiF without performing DA conversion for $79 ----

http://www.computersandmusic.com/xcgi/SoftCart.exe/store1/edirol/ua1a.html?L+mystore1+urub1816+1088598294

Oops -- forget that one -- didn't notice that it is the opposite of what I thought. It is for sending digital input INTO your computer using the USB port. Sorry 'bout that. That's what I get for posting before I've had coffee!

No problemo Rsbeck!!! Edirol DOES make one that converts usb to pcm. As does M-audio, Xitel, Waveterminal, and several others. I'm just trying to find which one is the best.

harry