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I am curious as to how the two types of DAC's compare.. The Firestone-Audio Fubar II and Spitfire have different chips - the Spitfire has a PCM1793 which is 24-bit with a higher sampling rate of 192kHz compared tothe Fubar's PCM2702 at 16-bit and a lower sampling rate of 48kHz.. Does this mean that when I use the Spitfire with one of these USB-SPDIF converter with my computer, it acts as an upsampling USB DAC?
And.. Does upsampling mean a more refined sound? I use 256kbps mp3, but will re-rip to lossless if necessary. Through my current set-up, I hear not much, if any, audible difference between 256kbps and lossless, and considering the extremely large files, I decided to stick with mp3..
I have the Fubar 2 and was considering replacing it with a Spitfire DAC.
While I don't see how it would upsample from a USB source through a SPDIF converter, I would be interested in anyone's thoughts on using the Spitfire with such a converter and if it's worth the expense and bother compared to the Fubar2.
The benefits of upsampling are rather contested. However there are still many benefits of a better quality dac, jitter rejection, tonal balance, s/n, timing, soundstage yadda yadda. Wordsize is a different story. You want a 24bit dac as 24 bit gives you headroom above the original file without distorting it (like upsampling), this headroom is useful for digital volume control amoungst other things. I'm not familiar with either dac but I wouldn't buy anything that only offered 16 bit word size.
The short answer is no. Just because a DAC is 24/192 capable does not mean it modifies the incomming data in any way. You need to look for a DAC that has a sample rate converter (SRC or ASRC), then, yes it will upsample the incomming data. I don't know for sure if the Spitefire has a SRC/ASRC, but I don't think so.
The other posters comments on only buying 24 bit DACs also doesn't make much sense, unless you are actually usuing your computer to alter the bit depth of the data on the fly (or you have a Meridian 518 or similar). Playing CD based music, without having a plug-in to convert it to a 24bit data stream, will have no benefit on a 24bit DAC unless it reprocess the data, and these level of DACs just don't do that.
USB-in DAC vs. optical/coax-in DAC
Linear Mode
