2. pc-audio
  3. 136384-5400

Is USB audio dying?

It seems inevitable that USB audio will be replaced with TCP/IP network based audio, either WiFI or Ethernet NICs built into an endpoint/dac as a transport for the audio stream. I have a nice USB audio rig, DAC + USB NAA, but I cant help thinking that pure network based interfaces are a more elegant solution.

At the high end, Mytek has done this with the Manhattan and its network streaming card, as has BluSound with their BluOS products. Many other products are doing this in the more general consumer friendly space like Denon, Marantz, Yamaha, Pioneer etc.

Are there any inherent advantages to handing off audio to the dac via USB?
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Showing 1 response by daverz

daverz
487 posts
 
It makes sense from a practical standpoint to get rid of the separate network transport and USB bus.  I have a Raspberry Pi running piCorePlayer, and all it does is read the stream from LMS on the ethernet connection, decode it to PCM, and send it out the USB to the DAC.   A ridiculously trivial job even for the little RPi.

On the other hand, with a built-in network transport, you are limited to whatever kind of stream the device supports.
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