Hook up any DAC straight to your computer via USB sans soundcard?

[ooheadsoo]

Here's a pretty expensive option but has some great flexibility features:
http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/v...er=asc&start=0

You could hook your dac up to your laptop no problem. A good soundcard like an RME or lynx would cost you way more than this mod. Of course, it could be said that a chaintech would be a whole lot cheaper but you still have jitter to contend with. The only thing in this whole thing that's not making too much sense to me is the length of the usb cable. IIRC, the max length for USB is pretty short, depending on the application, somewhere in the 6-10 feet range. Sorry, I haven't worked with usb specs in a few years and I'm too lazy to look it up

[Edwood]

Sounds interesting. You going to take one for the team and try one out?

-Ed

[ooheadsoo]

Nah, if anything, I'll let the boys over at the circles take the hit. I need a dac first and that won't be for at least a year

[Nick Dangerous]

I might go for it. I have a Meridian 566.24 and since it has 3 coax and 1 optical digital input... it has room to spare for the USB conversion.

[jivex5k]

What about just mounting an m audio transit to the DAC, wouldn't it basically do the same thing?

[Wodgy]

That's exactly what they do.

[audioengr]

Not quite. I direct-couple the USB interface CODEC to the receiver chip, which eliminates one or both S/PDIF interfaces and the S/PDIF cable. If you read my article in Positive-feedback, you will understand why you need at least a 1.5m S/PDIF cable in order to have low jitter in ANY stock S/PDIF interface:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

[Jonathan Griffin]

From the AudioCircle posting:
> 3) The added electronics is powered from the PC, so no power-draw or new power-supplies are necessary in the DAC.

Does this mean you're powering it off the USB bus? Is there a danger that this won't be a very clean power source?

Jonathan.

[audioengr]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Griffin

From the AudioCircle posting:
> 3) The added electronics is powered from the PC, so no power-draw or new power-supplies are necessary in the DAC.

Does this mean you're powering it off the USB bus? Is there a danger that this won't be a very clean power source?

Jonathan.

Yes, some of the logic is powered off the USB bus. My customers have not had any issues yet. I typically transformer-couple at some point in the design so that there is ground isolation.

[Wodgy]

Originally Posted by audioengr

Not quite. I direct-couple the USB interface CODEC to the receiver chip, which eliminates one or both S/PDIF interfaces and the S/PDIF cable.

Yeah, I was assuming you remove the optical or coax connection, but if you're just coupling the interface directly to the S/PDIF receiver, you're not eliminating S/PDIF, regardless of what you claim.