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DACs: Airport Express vs waveterminal vs mini-dac

I know this is impossible to quantify, but with a good stereo system (Cayin TA30 tube integrated amp & Green Mountain Audio Europa speakers), what's the magnitude of difference using the following dacs?

Airport Express (I already have the AX, and can connect it to the integrated amp with RCA's [analog])

Waveterminal U24: computer to USB to waveterminal to amp (waveterminal does the DA conversion)

Inexpensive DAC like ART DIO with waveterminal: computer to USB to waveterminal to ART DIO to amp (ART DIO does DA conversion)

Apogee mini-dac: computer to USB to mini-dac to amp

Other?

What's the best bang for the buck?
mschamberlin3865

Showing 5 responses by kenn39

kenn39
75 posts
 
I was afraid of the word "iTunes". On a WinPC, Foobar2000 gives better sound than iTunes in my opinion.

Again, I don't know much about the Macs. To be safe, you may want to find out how to get bit-perfect digital stream from a Mac before proceeding.

Good luck!
kenn39
75 posts
 
I assume the TriVista handles jitter reasonably well. That leaves the question whether you are getting bit-perfect output from motherboard. Are you?

There are many external USB to S/PDIF converters, stock or mod, that can do a good job feeding your TriVista from PC.
kenn39
75 posts
 
Pardales: I was referring to the various stock models from M-Audio and Edirol, and mod versions from Empirical and Redwine. Many have been mentioned earlier in this thread.

I have not tried any other than the stock M-Audio Transit. Pairing with a Benchmark DAC1, I was overjoyed when using Secret Rabbit Code upsampler with Foobar2000. I think Waveterminal does not have the option to output 24/96.

Reading the marketing info on the mods, I think they have the potential to be better. I may look into them seriously in the future. At this point, I am just enjoying music.
kenn39
75 posts
 
Too many variables here: is the standalone DAC better than the internal DAC of the CDP? Is the hard drive based system set up properly? Are the sound files on the hard drive ripped properly? Whether and how does the media player/OS re-mix the sound?

From those who did the comparison, as a transport, a properly set up hard drive based system can perform as well as a mega bucks transport. How the whole system sounds at the end depends on many other factors.
kenn39
75 posts
 
Dollar for dollar, you can't do better than hard drive based transport.

Don't know much about the Mac world. Perhaps someone can shed some lights on the particulars in the Mac world, such as how to get bit-perfect digital stream out of a Mac.

The only other thing is whether the noise level from your laptop and hard drive can become a factor.
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