RME has recently come out with a 24/192 capable USB digital interface. It's a pro oriented piece and offers a vast number of input/output options. For audiophiles it does offer a S/PDIF I/O. I believe the price is $1300. |
Lets think for a second here about when USB for music playback came into being
and why. It seems to me the USB interface was directed towards the sake of convenience crowd, far more so than for the audiophilic nervousa crowd. But just as with the Pro Audio sector, the audiophobic crowd has found yet another vein for which to investigate and try bending to their ends. With a modicum of success only, they then have the audacity to cry for excellence from this interface while still in its infancy and as yet ill defined in its metamorphoses. Goodness. See how much those little iPods have done to us? More so, I think than they have done for us, at times. USB was to us however large or small the promise was on its lips. A simple, widespread interface that yielded plug and play use. No learning curve to speak of, and its CHEAP! Well . It sounds pretty good on the desktop lets see how it sounds on the big rig! Hmmm needs some tweaking but it has potential. Enter then, G Rankin, and those of that ilk offering the use of that simple convenient nothing to it cable, and assuring better than ever performance with some interesting and unique designs. Great! Hard Drive acreage plummeted like A.I.G. stock, and now storing vast amounts of media could be had almost for the asking. High Def finally had sufficient egress. A new home almost anywhere and for mere pennies. Confusing the issues further was Hollywood. Namely with a covetous protection array instituted purely for their own ends called HDMI. 24-192 capabilities over HDMI 1.3a. one wire! Indeed an audiophiliacs notion of heresy! I was just getting used to USB 1.0! How better to serve the music nut than to enable them to render veritable square miles of HDD space than to make great DACs that also (oh by the way), have USB inputs? As well, for the more discriminating ($$$), some other levels of higher yielding digital fare? Wait a mo . What about I2S, and Firewire oops USB 3.0? USB was made for computer users. Personal confusers outdate themselves quicker than chickens eating skinny worms! Geezzz louise, they have obsolescence built into the equation as standard operating proceedure! Now theres a new USB format upcoming? Hmmm . Lets see can I keep up and live comfortably on the bleeding edge? Nope. Its too costly as the changes arrive too quickly and with too vast an assortment. Latest and supposedly greatest isnt always bestest in truth. So whats to do? Well, what has worked in digital for some time now during the inception of iPods, HDMI, Why Fi, firewires, the various USB iterations and those which inevitably will follow? AES BNC, and Coax SPDIF yep and TOS too. So if its a digital world well be a dwelling ing, All one needs to do is convert properly the digital signal, preferably outside the PCs domain to these aforementioned units and be done with it and let the digital dust settle. According to the Stereophile review by JA on the BC usb converter, he made a case for the M Audio $99 unit too for that task, and the EMU USB card for a second option while addressing the 24/96 devotee needs. there are others, BTW . RME, Lynx , etc. which satisfy higher word lengths and bit rates. I dont think the digital world and the audio purists worlds are ever going to be on par with one another. The focus for each is different. The targeted audience is different. Blending new school tech with old school traditions is where things become muddied. AS much as I respect efforts from Wavlenth, Imperical Audio, Bel Canto, Lavry, etc using a standard (gosh) high end DAC being fed by a good to very good sound card via AES, BNC, or coax sure has its benefits. Not to mention the abilities to process more than adequately the higher numbers game. True also for some configurations, the wireless route seems best and least pricey for some time to come yet. Unless of course, your pockets are as deep as are your ambitions. As Jax2 said and Ill support in other words, it always comes to this Just what flavor of chocolate does one prefer, and how much are you willing to pay the vendor for it? The digital world begs one other question and how often? Theres an awful lot of ways around here to skin the proverbial cat than merely by USB alone that are a bit more future proof. |
AS much as I respect efforts from Wavlenth, Imperical Audio, Bel Canto, Lavry, etc using a standard (gosh) high end DAC being fed by a good to very good sound card via AES, BNC, or coax sure has its benefits. Not to mention the abilities to process more than adequately the higher numbers game. I don't see any benefits of introducing an extra step of a sound card conversion from USB to AES/coax. In fact, I really don't see the advantage of using the badly designed AES/coax SPDIF connection that lacks a separate clock transfer and barely can make 24/192 (most SPDIF inputs are limited to 24/96 too). One of the big advantages with asynchronous USB is that you can place the clock right next to the DAC chip and slave the PC to the DAC clock. That gives the lowest jitter and something that is not at all possible with AES, coax or any other traditional conversion schemes. Finally, the only limit to data transfer rates via USB is due to the lack of drivers. If a company is willing to write drivers for their DAC then 24/192 won't be a problem. And I don't see USB disappearing from PCs anytime soon. There is something to be said for Firewire too - the best computer DAC implementation I heard to date uses Firewire (the Weiss DAC2/Minerva). But that requires extra drivers as well for 24/192 operation. |
07-24-09: RestockThat Focusrite Saffire, in addition to having two FireWire ports and RCA SP/DIF In and Out, also has built-in A/D *and* D/A converters with a max rate of 24/192. List price $500 (same as the Bel Canto USB-to-SP/DIF converter), but typical street price is $350. And if the DAC isn't up to snuff, one can always send the SP/DIF signal to a Benchmark, Lavry, or what have you. (PS:Lavry eschews 192K intentionally). |
Restock hit the nail on the head. It's not just souncard versus USB. If you feed a wordclock signal from the dac to the soundcard, you get better results than just sound card alone. Also, there a different ways to do USB - asynchronous, isochronous, different drivers, etc. And not all USB implementations are created equal. That's why other companies are now licensing Empirical Audio's technology for their USB implementations. A few years ago, there was a movement away from sound cards with AES and no wordclock feedback toward asynchronous USB because you could get lower jitter. Without owning one, it seems that Playback Designs and the new Emm Labs DAC2 eliminate the problem of which type of signal to use by doing whatever they do to correct the signal after it reaches the DAC. Now, is the result better if you use a less jittery USB signal compared to AES signal that comes off a noisy PC internal sound card? I don't know. |
