PC-Audio vs. High-end CD Player-GAME OVER

1. Many digital designers would agree that the noisy switching power supply in a PC-based audio can never come even close to a linear power supply, especially if R-Core power transformers are used. A "nice DAC" (or any other “solution”) can not help eliminating the switching power downsides. This includes a Laptop because the battery feeds a switching power supply inside.

Deshapiro's DAC receives a digital stream from the PC via USB. If a fiber optic USB cable is used, the DAC is electrically isolated from the PC. If a reclocker is used in between (e.g., Empirical Audio Pace Car), then the digital signal is reclocked, reducing or eliminating any effects introduced into the digital stream from the PC. This way, PC power supply is not a factor.

Hi All,
The DAC has a separate power supply. Shouldn't that play a role in isolation? The supplied USB cable is also shielded.

David

Goatwuss, Empirical's solution is a good alternative, but there is still another one: Logitech/SlimDevices Transporter. It is wireless and has a wordclock input, so that you can connect it to a top-quality DAC like LessLoss with wordclock output and you'd be up there with the big boys. I have been using a Bolder-modded wireless SqueezeBox2 for more than a year and recently added a Monarchy Audio M24 preamp/DAC; the sound I'm getting is extremely good.

The drives, memory, processors and interfaces in the PC-Audio are powered with the noisy switching power. You can isolate this from the DAC but that does not help anything when it comes to the actual data processing.

Isolating the DAC from the PC brings an obvious improvement. Why? Try supplying your DAC from the switching power supply in the computer and see what happens with the sound.

It is very interesting to me that no one acknowledges the fact that PC-Audio remains powered by the noisy switching supply. But it does not end here. How about the fact that your audio data is being transformed to many different protocols inside the computer so it can be processed and stored? Do you really believe this can be a better solution compared to a quiet linear powered and precision clocked dedicated audio DSP directly hooked up to the DAC with 5 inches long cables? Not in my book!

Again, convenience and nice sound is a suitable description for PC-Audio. But when it comes to the best possible audio quality, I will have to disagree.

Finally, I have 5 desktops and 2 laptops here. :-)

Regards,
Alex

Alex,

Have you experimented with the Slim Devices Transporter. This device seems to take out all of the factors of which you complain about PC audio. Linn has even jumped on board with their $20,000 Klimax DS. Both are network servers. So, if you stream wave files over the ethernet cable, no processing. The Transporter with a great DAC should equal or best most stuff on the market. Maybe not your players, who knows, but have you tried a network streaming device. You are right about PC audio. This is probably a dead end, as well as USB DACs, but network streaming seems to combine the best of both worlds. If you added an ethernet port to the NWO, that would be exciting for me.

I have a rubidium clock hooked up to my transporter right now and it sounds pretty good, but the dac is certainly inferior. I would love to hook up my transporter and clock to an Alps DAC. Is it out yet?

Thanks,
andy