Sending music to DAC wireless vs wired

i have both wired and wireless hookups in my house. i have cat5e wire and use 802.11g wireless. the only issue i have had with the wireless connection is competing with another wireless device. i had to change the channel setting on my WAP and it has been fine ever since.

i would recommend hooking up your computer or external device (airport express for example) to a jitter reduction unit, then from there going into an external dac. there was a HUGE difference in the quality of the sound when adding these devices before the dac. i use a quality coax cable from the jitter device into the dac. all of my remote connections in my house have this type of setup with very good results.

i also believe after reading articles and reviews of usb connections with usb dacs that that is not the way to go. the other reason is you are limited on which dac you can by if you stick with usb. the best external dacs do not use usb and the reviews of the dacs with usb have not been favorable.

audioengr: the best dacs do not use usb. i still checked and your dcs,esoteric, nagra, manley, the older audio research, levinson, classe (which i favor over the current benchmark) do not use usb. the new audio research dac is coming out with usb so we will have to wait and see how it compares. also, if i wanted to use an external clock generator, i would be out of luck since none of these that i know of can accept USB.
i'm not saying that you can't use a USB connection, but if you do, you are limiting yourself on what you can use with it. if you like the quality of the benchmark DAC with its usb connection, then by all means, go for it. if you want to get a better dac or get an older better dac, then you can't use USB.

steve - i did read your 2 articles but i stopped after reading this in 1 of the articles:

"Turning to the Benchmark's sound via its USB connection, I auditioned it exclusively using a pair of Sennheiser HD650 headphones. Playing the 24-bit master files for my Stereophile recordings, everything seemed fine. But with iTunes running on my PowerBook as the source of 16-bit music files, the sound seemed a little grainier than I was expecting from my experience using S/PDIF and AES/EBU sources."

also, when comparing the benchmark using a digital connection, the reviewer liked the bel canto unit a little better. since you brought up this article, here is a review of the bel canto dac 3 that has a usb connection from 6 moons:

"Comparing USB to S/PDIF, the former sounded marginally constricted dynamically and showed far less separation between vocals and the backing instrumentation. The vocal was also placed further back in the mix and with less presence. In my system, the CD combo had greater dynamic contrast, a wider and deeper soundstage, again more flesh on the bone in terms of body and presence and more powerful and deeper bass. Dimensionality left to right, up and down and especially in the depth plane was more expansive on S/PDIF. Let's just say that the CD/DAC combo was superior in every aspect of music making by comparison."

again, this is not the only review of an external dac that includes a usb connection that a reviewer found the digital connections (non-usb) sound superior to the usb connection. here is the link if you want to see the review:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/bcddac3/dac3.html