Fred Kaplan's current blog posting (here) has me thinking again about how valuable lossless codecs are, or could be.

Black Saint's and Soul Note's output is one of the great treasures of jazz, but most of it is hard to come by. How much better, how much safer it would be if the catalog were available as FLAC files.

I recently bought a Wadia 170i Ipod transport and then I began to look around for a DAC that would be compatible with the Wadia and not be too costly. Most of the used DACS that I found were WAY too expensive to dedicate to a $300 IPOD transport and I was afraid that I might just have to punt on using my Ipod with "the good stuff"

I am very, very interested in them and the PHY-HP drivers..

id love to hear them? help?

from another forum :

MYTEK DIGITAL ANNOUNCES NEW HI-END USB/FIREWIRE DAC

Mytek Digital of New York City, manufacturer of high end mastering audio converters announced at AES Convention in New York, in October 2009, a brand new Stereo 192 DAC, top performance 192k PCM and DSD Digital to Analog Converter. The new DAC features USB and Firewire, as well as standard AES, SPDIF and Toslink inputs, capable of handling stereo PCM playback of up to 24 bit 192k as well as playback of DSD files with absolute state of the art accuracy and transparency.

My wife and I were just at an audio dealer yesterday afternoon checking out tuners. But we were only able to convince ourselves to purchase an old Chicago album for 8 bucks. We listened to the album - not their best effort - and just as the last track was finishing, the turntable motor died. At first we thought that it was part of the music, but had to laugh when we discovered it was the turntable. Har Har.

That's just a long winded way of saying we need a new TT. My budget is less than $2000 cartidge not included.