Is USB overrated as decent digital source?

I have been studying this for a few months and there are several approaches. Finished products such as Gordon Rankin's Wavelength products, less expensive but possibly as good stuff from Scott Nixon, or the kit approach. Google DDDAC for an example.

I am presently using a Scott Nixon USB DAC (modified by me by replacing the output caps with some I like much better and running it from a battery supply) and couldn't be happier with the results. My previous player was a Naim CDX-2 ($5,000) and I have no regrets.

I see no reason to get a converter to go from USB to spdif and then feed that to a conventional DAC as there are one box devices. Some use oversampling so that is something to consider. The Nixon DAC as well as others have basically 2 chips, the USB receiver fed to a DAC chip. Some also use a single chip, a USB receiver that also ouputs analog but all of these oversample so I personally would stay away.

I bought a Mac Mini as my server with storage on redundant firewire drives and it is a cheap (relatively) and very simple solution. I tried it on a Windows system but it becomes very complicated, the best ripper is a clunky third party program that is difficult to set up and use and the best players are even worse as well as having to use additional plug in programs to bypass the Windows kmixer digital handling that screws up the sound. The Apple Mini is simple and has a remote to control your music library

Herman,
I have been considering the Mac Mini with either a Hagerman Chim or a Wavelength DAC. I have been wondering what you use for a screen with the Mac Mini and do you need a mouse and keyboard? I was hoping that, if it were to be used as a music server only, that it would be possible to get a very small flat screen and that only a mouse would be needed.

It comes without screen, keyboard, or mouse but just about anything will work. I bought a 19 in lcd at Compusa on sale for $199, an Apple keyboard and mouse. It will suppost a wireless bluetooth mouse and keyboard but I didn't see the need. When you boot up it it looks for both and won't go on until you plug them in, besides, you will want to edit file names and make playlists so you need a keyboard. You may want to go with a bigger screen as the mini comes with a great remote that you can use to control playback.

http://www.apple.com/imac/frontrow.html

Hi Mike -

That's a tremendous thread you got going on AA.

Really not much to discuss except for the various value propositions offered by the manufacturers.

As Herman points out there is much to like about one box solutions but this is basically the same argument as CD players. If you have a great DAC already go the USB box with a SPDIF output to get started.

As Herman points out, these devices are based on stock chipsets being mass manufactured. What we are seeing - and are not really used to yet as audiophiles- is the impact of being able to use mass produced standardized products designed to sell to a worldwide market.

As the market settles, I don't think that products will have or manufacturers will be able to justify the kind of price spread we are used to in the rest of our space. One big reason is that there is no need to jump through the kinds of hoops it takes to make a great transport, turntable or speaker. (eg advanced metallurgy and manufacturing skills, sophisticated power supplies, furniture grade cabinetry with resonance and damping controls etc, etc) No analog physics here - not much EE - just IT

IMHO the three devices that have had the biggest impact on most people reading this forum (and Asylum PC where I also post regularly under xmasparty) are the Waveterminal ($155), the Squeezebox ($249) and the iPod ($350) The leading software - iTunes - is free.

Even without the tweaks being offered by the modders like Steve, Gordon, Wayne and Vinnie, we are already as close to as most of us are going to get (or will ever need to get) to a perfect source. We have some money in your pocket. And you can go back to fiddling with the rest of your rig.

Add a few hundred dollars for a better power supply or clock or connectors or caps and you have something better then most of us ever dreamed of.

As the big boys in the CE space start to do the math on iPod adoption I would expect more and more of them to being implementing strategies to get a piece of this pie...

Ok take for a moment that what your really asking is for some sort of Digital source to be changed to analog. Leave the USB out of it to begin with. USB is nothing more than a type of connection that will support a transfer rate of about 50MB a second. Are you interested in the dac, the connection, or how it gets interfaced with your source? All of them?

Then mass produced items get poor (generally) dacs the most expensive get the better dacs and better caps and better designs from the input (USB) to the output RCA.

IPODS do not output from USB they take input, they output analog which makes the ipod a non source. If you want to use the USB DAC from your computer then you place a whole additional piece in this puzzle as your computer must be fast enough to allow unbroken transmission to your DAC. This is easier said than done especially depending on the compression or non compression of your source and how the USB DAC supports the USB interface.

How does a winning combination sound? Better than most will admit, especially a audiophile, as we tend to hold on to the things we know, quite hard sometimes.