Newbe PC audio

True, but then you need to compare the DAC-1 to units costing three times as much that may sound as good or better without all the tweaking.

While firewire is preferable to USB I wouldn't say a "world of difference". Enough though for me to choose a firewire product in the Saffire LE.

RWA Isabellina DAC with MacBook Air and iTouch as a controler replaced my $3200 Consonance Droplet .....which is collecting dust at the moment.
I will keep my Droplet for sentimental reasons but I really start to question present technology and what direction & form it's going to choose.

Musicman, The Saffire is a great little rig. I'm perplexed why the majority here are going USB rather than firewire.

I should add that Isabellina dac is a buid in feature in my Isabella tube preamp.
Mac usb-out •DAC USB-in • iTunes controled wirelessly by iTouch and "remote wiglet" (free download from Apple).

Don't have that much exp. with "FireWire" but to my ears USB sounds pretty good......at least in this configuration.

How would you describe the differences and what gear did you use? Just curious .

Thanks

Cerrot - I have been wondering about the new Firewire DiceII chip and how good it is, as you tout this with almost every post you make. I read the AES paper on the JET jitter reduction and it was very interesting. Well a friend finally brought over a Konnect, so we did Firewire to S/PDIF with a 2-foot Firewire cable and compared it to USB to S/PDIF with a 5 meter USB cable, both 24/96 and 44.1. Not even close, sorry.

Steve N.