Is USB overrated as decent digital source?

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.

Mr. Stepenson, I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that the computer with usb interface isn't fast enough?

I'm streaming uncompressed data from my Mini to my USB DAC and it works just fine. In fact it uses the older, slower USB1.1 as do all USB receivers designed for audio that I know of. USB 1.1 is more than fast enough to handle wav files.

Yes, USB1.1 has maximum 12Mb/sec bandwidth which is still fast enough to handle streaming music files even at 24bit resolution.

So, which external USB DAC have you decided on?

I sold my fully modded SB2 after 6 months a bought a CEC TL-1 transport for my EAD 7000 III DAC, couldnt be happier, the sound from the CEC is miles away better than the Modded Squeezebox2 into the DAC, the SB2 directly to amps did nothing...

I still have to try out the Wavelenght, but since I am using a passsive preamp the Brick wont do (so I hear) so I will need to splash ot some good cash....

I am afraid of cheaper options now, but I am listening, I have most of my CDs now on WAV files and I really love the availability of music through the computer.