Hi all,
I'm looking for DAC suggestions as well as confirmation of my understanding of the technologies in my setup.
The DAC would ideally be small, as I would be (cheaply) bringing it back and forth between work and home occasionally. My price range is approximately $200. Here are my two setups:
Work:
Sennheiser HD650 headphones
Bottlehead Crack OTL amplifier
PC with ASUS Xonar DS soundcard (may be ignorable with the DAC)
Home:
Axiom M22 v3 main speakers
Outlaw LFM-1 Plus subwoofer
Yamaha HTR-6240BL 525-watt 5-channel receiver
Laptop or PC (laptop now, PC soon)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 (USB) (may be ignorable with the DAC)
I'm thinking that a USB DAC would probably be preferable, since all my music is stored in FLAC format and I use my PCs to play them. S/PDIF might be a nice-to-have feature as well. I'm assuming standard composite cables would be my preferable output into my receiver at home and my Bottlehead amp at work.
Most of my music is standard CD-quality 16-bit, 44.1kHz FLACs, but I also have a lot of material in 24-bit, 48kHz and 96kHz FLAC as well. It's important to me that I know for certain that what I'm outputting digitally is being processed and output in that format. All the documentation on S/PDIF I can find is very iffy on this subject, so I'm beginning to think that tossing S/PDIF out the window might be a good idea in this case, and that I should utilize USB in both home and work scenarios.
What do you guys think?
Thanks in advance for your help.
