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March 25, 2012 - 12:07pm
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Why are these DACs still class A+?
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What is a barrage of pro USB and anti S/PDIF, AES/EBU, BNC? Are you referring to products, opinions, publicity, a movement? Do you think external DACs without USB input, like Bricast M1, don't sound as good as USB "audiophile quality" DACs? Does someone else think that? Does "audiophile quality" even have a useful definition?
I'm not sure I get your premise or your question. If you are speaking tongue-in-cheek (highly probable), then just ignore this post.
EDIT: I think I get it. I just read your recent exchange with jackfish in the other thread. I'm not willing to address the conspiracy. haha
That's fine. You got it right and I sure hope that I'm just imagining a conspiracy and that at worst it's just a another passing fad.
Sure, I suppose it could be called a fad. My opinion is that with so many computers having a USB output, and the industry having figured out how to get pretty good sound with asynchronous USB, it seems like a natural. My netbook doesn't have a S/PDIF output, and using a converter, which I did when I had the Grace m902 because of its poor USB performance, is just an extra device to spend money on (and worry that it's negatively effecting sound quality). Frankly, playing the same file from my CD player via a S/PDIF connection vs. from PC the via USB sounds the same to me. I have bigger issues that effect the sound of my system.
I've read so much about the limitations or strengths of the different connection methods, but the details don't really have meaning to my listening experience beyond, does it sound good, is it readily available, and is it affordable? Maybe we'll get to 12s connections between devices some day. Isn't that supposed to be the ultimate.
USB, the reason,everybody has USB on their computer, TV, receiver darn near everything these days. Better, I had never seen test to provie USB was better than Firewire and the other connections. I have the Weiss DAC202 and a Benchmark DAC1HDR.
True but not totally correct.
For example I have several different computers & laptops, while they all USB ports which can be used for input or output, most of them an additional digital audio output port which is not USB, e.g. coax, optical, HDMI, etc.
My HYDTV and blu-ray player & media streaming device all have USB inputs, however the digital audio output is NOT USB, again it is either coax, optical, HDMI, etc.
Finally I completely agree that some kind of testing needs to be done to prove that asynchronous USB is universally better than all the other methods for transferring a digital audio data stream to a DAC. Otherwise all this fascination with asynchronous USB is nothing more than noise and jitter :)
A test would be nice along with proven measurements to back it up..
Because they are two of the very best-sounding D/A processors we have experienced.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Thank you JA for that very plain and simple explanation. Or to put it another way, A DAC does not need to have asynchronous USB to sound very good. In fact there are several DACs without asynchronous USB that sound good enough to be Stereophile Class A+