steve - i did read your 2 articles but i stopped after reading this in 1 of the articles:
"Turning to the Benchmark's sound via its USB connection, I auditioned it exclusively using a pair of Sennheiser HD650 headphones. Playing the 24-bit master files for my Stereophile recordings, everything seemed fine. But with iTunes running on my PowerBook as the source of 16-bit music files, the sound seemed a little grainier than I was expecting from my experience using S/PDIF and AES/EBU sources."
also, when comparing the benchmark using a digital connection, the reviewer liked the bel canto unit a little better. since you brought up this article, here is a review of the bel canto dac 3 that has a usb connection from 6 moons:
"Comparing USB to S/PDIF, the former sounded marginally constricted dynamically and showed far less separation between vocals and the backing instrumentation. The vocal was also placed further back in the mix and with less presence. In my system, the CD combo had greater dynamic contrast, a wider and deeper soundstage, again more flesh on the bone in terms of body and presence and more powerful and deeper bass. Dimensionality left to right, up and down and especially in the depth plane was more expansive on S/PDIF. Let's just say that the CD/DAC combo was superior in every aspect of music making by comparison."
again, this is not the only review of an external dac that includes a usb connection that a reviewer found the digital connections (non-usb) sound superior to the usb connection. here is the link if you want to see the review:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/bcddac3/dac3.html
