ARRIVED: new Rega DAC - Page 5

Fair enough, thanks.

I agree it is hard to compare speaker soundstage and headphone soundstage, the 'perspective' angle seems well thought out as the best answer possible.

You might have been doing that.. I bought a slightly used Naim DAC last spring, and was quite dissapointed, it sounded no better than my Marantz SA7001KI, slightly worse, in fact. My wife agreed - which is the ultimate test :). So I emailed Naim and told them this. They said I had gotten a bad unit and they would replace it. And they did  :-) It sounded very much better. At my local Naim dealer, several people had a/b-ed my unit with the demo they had in the shop - all three of them agreed that mine was doing a worse job than the other unit. Mysteriously.. 

The fun thing about this was that the guy I bought it from had been written a REVIEW, based on the flawed unit that is. Never got to publish it, though :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by khollister 
............................ Amazing - I could swear we are not listening to the same piece of equipment. ..........................

EDIT - double post

I'm definitely interested in this product, but the lack of asynchronous USB concerns me as that will be my primary means of listening.  The fact that it could have been the best interface instead of the worst is just simply too bad.

just get a hiface, terlink or whatever :-) Most usb inputs of dacs are second rate anyway. Naim didn't even bother to put a pc/mac-usb port into their dac - they left that part to others.. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by khollister 

Agreed - I even recall seeing a post somewhere  that the W4S DAC-2 (which is supposed to have a state of the art USB input) was improved feeding via S/PDIF from an EVO or Offramp or such. 

The W4S DAC2 internally uses an (OEM) M2 Tech USB -> I2S implementation. Not that I tried feeding SPDIF to it from an external USB converter, but I'd take the comment that an EVO feeding the DAC2 "improves" it with a pinch of salt.

Yes, you're right, the "official" M2 Tech driver will not work with the W4S DAC. But let's just say that in a past life I've reverse engineered a driver or two. I'd be willing to have a bet on it. ;)

Async-usb allows the only jitter source to be from the DAC itself, effectively making it the best interface if the jitter of the Dac is better than that of any source feeding it through SPDIF + the cable combination. 

-So possible quality of sound of a DAC would go in this order IMHO:

(with this fact in mind - jitter order from lowest to most 1. super precise clock == super low jitter source, 2. average jitter source 3. usb source)

DAC with async USB with super precise clock fed by USB source > DAC fed by super low jitter spdif source > DAC fed by average jitter source > DAC fed by USB source

An async-usb implementation that doesn't use a very precise master clock can probably sound worse than if fed by a very low jitter spdif source.  So it all depends on implementation.

I wonder how much source jitter makes a difference with the Rega Dac on the spdif inputs. We already heard that spdif inputs sound better than the USB input, but how much of that depends on the source of the spdif?

-Will USB on the Rega Dac sound worse than being fed spdif through the hiface EVO?  Sounds like yes.

-Will USB on the Rega Dac sound worse than being fed spdif through a cheap onboard sound card? 

-Will the sound of the Rega Dac be improved by the hiface EVO compared to using a cheap onboard spdif output?

If questions 2 is also yes and question 3 is no, then I know I can easily live with the Rega Dac as it can handle any digital source and manage the jitter so I don't have to have premium digital transports to get the great sound out of the unit.  Being able to get the same great sound whether being fed by a Saturn, a hiface EVO, or the crappiest spdif computer output I will ever encounter...that would make the lack of async-usb acceptable for me.  However...what is the answer for question 2 and 3?

If there is a big drop off going to USB, versus feeding the SPDIF input a lower jitter source, I wouldn't bother with the USB since you're not maximizing the DAC.

I will be auditioning a Rega ISIS player soon to see how the USB input fares versus spinning discs.

Do both digital outputs on the DAC send data based on whichever input is selected, even USB?  I wonder if you could use it as a usb to spdif converter to send DTS/ Dolby Digital streams through a usb to computer connection.