Because of where things must be physically, my router sends wifi (16 bit/44.1 KHz PCM) to an Audioengine B-FI. I connected its Toslink output to the Toslink input of the DAC. It sounds great to me. The important components are the amplification - a Quicksilver Integrated in my case - and the speakers - Focal Aria 906's. They both made major improvements over what was in their place previously.
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Ethernet or I2S. Most people will say there dac doesn't have those connections and you would be right. The better dacs do and for good reason. You can spend hundreds if not much more trying to get USB to sound half way decent and that's after spending $1000 for a good USB cable. Using a good ethernet cable, now you don't need a server in your audio room. Another plus! The most important piece of a server is the software that reads ripped data or streams data from an outside site like tidal. There are some very good software programs that will do this on a $200 linux raspberry pi box or a $50,000 linux server (I had such a box that I used for work with TB's of commercial NVMe and SSD storage along with 256G ram) and there isn't any difference in sound quality going thru ethernet and with better SQ than using USB. If I had to have a dedicated server in my audio room, then use I2S. |
everybody's got an opinion... please refer to these for a proper explanation and perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWM8fOCCVW4&t=1008s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grzoqEb2KMk&t=104s |
at the top of the food chain it’s USB. the top dacs and servers are optimized for USB. it’s where companies like MSB are designing proprietary interfaces for USB optimization and servers like the Taiko Extreme have custom USB output cards. USB is not perfect which is why there are quite a few different efforts to optimize it. it’s just the least compromised approach. it’s what i use. i also have Ethernet and a Renderer for my MSB dac but the USB interface sounds better. however there are no wrong answers, and in the middle of the market there are many reasonable ways to get the digital stream from the server/laptop to the dac. choose a dac then ask the dac maker what interface works best with that dac. keep in mind that it's inevitable that better digital interfaces will be implemented, which is why if you invest in an expensive dac it should be modular so the interface can be upgraded reasonably and your dac won't become an expensive door stop. my MSB is fully modular and designed with future changes anticipated. |
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