April 30, 200917 yr Author So the bottleneck in most USB DACs would be the receiver chip rather than the protocol? Speeding off topic, is it silly for me to make a fetish of USB or FireWire connectivity anyway when I could just run optical from my iMac and enjoy both hi-rez capability and a far larger choice of DACs, vintage and modern? I guess I just have it in my head -- for no substantive reason -- that toslink sucks and should be avoided where possible. Is there anything to that?
April 30, 200917 yr So the bottleneck in most USB DACs would be the receiver chip rather than the protocol? Speeding off topic, is it silly for me to make a fetish of USB or FireWire connectivity anyway when I could just run optical from my iMac and enjoy both hi-rez capability and a far larger choice of DACs, vintage and modern? I guess I just have it in my head -- for no substantive reason -- that toslink sucks and should be avoided where possible. Is there anything to that? Go with toslink and a upsampling/jitter removing dac and you're just fine. I prefer it because there is nothing conductive betweent he noisy ground of the computer and the DAC. On my DAC1 you could hear the ground noise with very sensitive phones but through toslink it was dead quiet. YMMV with the amount of ground noise.
April 30, 200917 yr I prefer the optical connection between my MAC Mini and the DACMagic compared to the USB connection. Didn't do a DBT but listened back and forth for a few days and settled on the optical. The USB always sounded a little "fuzzy" compared to the optical.
April 30, 200917 yr So the bottleneck in most USB DACs would be the receiver chip rather than the protocol? Speeding off topic, is it silly for me to make a fetish of USB or FireWire connectivity anyway when I could just run optical from my iMac and enjoy both hi-rez capability and a far larger choice of DACs, vintage and modern? I guess I just have it in my head -- for no substantive reason -- that toslink sucks and should be avoided where possible. Is there anything to that?Correct. Yes. No.
May 1, 200917 yr I prefer the optical connection between my MAC Mini and the DACMagic compared to the USB connection. Didn't do a DBT but listened back and forth for a few days and settled on the optical. The USB always sounded a little "fuzzy" compared to the optical. This was my experience as well. Swapped USB & optical cables from the macbook to the DAC3. Optical seemed more resolving and the USB had an edgy or grainy quality. But no DBT here either.
May 7, 200917 yr http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk20/allyourpicsarebelongtous/IMG_0185.jpg You little fucking sneak
May 7, 200917 yr My friendly local Ayre dealer says they're getting one in any day now and would be happy to lend it to me for a week to try out at home. So, woot! You little fucking sneak He wasn't exactly stealthy about it.
May 7, 200917 yr Please do give us some listening impressions. If possible, I would also like to see some pics of the internals. I want to know what DAC chips they decided to use.
May 7, 200917 yr He wasn't exactly stealthy about it. Yeah, but he just posted a picture when it arrived; he didnt even warm up to it at all. Just sprung it on me. Like this http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3642/3510706919_86a84c1cf3.jpg?v=0
May 7, 200917 yr Author Like I'm going to click that! Anyway, aside from the sound, which on first listen is very, very good, the USB implementation seems to be solid. I'm currently listening through the DAC while simultaneously syncing an iPhone and backing up to an external USB drive -- with no bus noise at all.
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