difference beetwen pc audio and hi-end?

A CD player is nothing at all like a computer. The only similarities is they are both digital electronics and require power supplies.

With the introduction of asynchronous usb DACs I thought the computer interface and software would be less important. As long as all the 0's and 1's are delivered with or without jitter and power supply differences etc. I thought the newer DACS "RE-CLOCK" the signal making the device sending the data immaterial.

If this is not the case why is the computer and software sooo important? A data stream of audio bits and their delivery cannot possibly be as difficult to send without errors as all the data transfered in milliseconds each and every day, billions of times on Wall-street and satellite tracking and cell phone communications, DRONES in Afghanistan controlled remotely from Vandenberg AFB. that go on without a bit of error.

I find it hard to believe that using a PC, Linux, or one of the many Apple products if set up properly with minimum resource hogs would not sound the same if using a device that "Re-clocks the data" before going to the audio output.

I really don't have answers for all the questions above, but I have to download proprietary drivers for my USB DAC, there are around 10 different drivers and every one of them sound noticeably different. The last 2 have been very good.

can't comment on usb anything as i'm not a usb fan. will tell that when i tried a macbook pro/amarra in my streaming system, it sounded no different then my i5 win7 set-up. no difference what so ever even though we tried very hard to hear something(including hi res).

maybe mac's do better with usb??....they change nothing when streaming.

to answer the OP's original question...pc audio is getting really close imho. in my pc system, i'd call it an 8.5 vs the 10 my transport yields. hoping the upcoming ps audio pwd upgrade gets me over the small hump still remaining.

cheers

"If this is not the case why is the computer and software sooo important?"

Unfortunately, these USB interfaces are not as perfect as they should be. They are sometimes affected by common-mode noise, particularly when the system uses several different AC circuits, creating ground loops. I know this because of some experiments I did using common-mode filters on USB cables.

It is best to plug the computer and DAC into the same AC circuit, but this is no guarantee that it wil fix the problem entirely.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio