Good evening everyone,
I have a question for you guys,
As digital sources, I currently own a NetBook (running Linux), an iPod Classic and an Arcam rDAC.
Since my listening files are mostly CD rips (few Hi-Res albums in storage) I'd like to know whether getting an iPod Dock featuring an SPDIF coax. out such as the Onkyo ND-S1 for listening just to those rips would be an upgrade, a downgrade or neither.
my current chain is just like this:
FLAC files on ext.HDD |---USB---> NetBook |---USB(dCS)---> DAC
instead of...
ALAC files on iPod |---USB---> Dock |---coax SPDIF---> DAC
Would something change in better or worse?
Does ALAC and FLAC files give the same playbacking quality?
Can that tiny iPod CPU do the job?
Can that tiny USB/SPDIF converter to the job (or was it meant to be fed with lossy files, indeed?)
I'm going into a very very revealing headphone amp, I'm afraid of all that tiny stuff before it to make some kind of noise...
On one hand, I know I could invest that money on starting to build a music server (would that be such a cost-effective improvement instead?); on the other hand, the idea of "going back" into listening to music without having to switch the computer on, especially after having spent a day working on it, attracts me.
Also, I've read around that connecting two such devices to the same USB hub of a Netbook is far from being the best solution, because of their power management issues, and I was wondering if this implementation could give better results, at least with CD rips, even though my rDAC features that "famous" dCS asynch USB receiver I would stop exploiting... :)
