Well if it helps you sleep easier, and it does me, then use a USB 3.0 port (much faster) and stick a separately powered USB 3.0 hub ( $25 ) in between the PC and the DAC.   Simples, job's a good 'un.   Happy Xmas, love and peace to you all in 2015

  We haven't even started yet. Watch and enjoy:}

No, only 25% :>)

Yes I agree, a thoroughly nice chap and great communicator, I have read both those as well and his book about the Challenger disaster. Just a pity about that rather dodgy experiment :>~

  I think that you are spot on here in your analysis of why some people can hear a difference. It is about the range of frequencies and how they change. Harmonics are of most importance. What you haven't quite realised is that the information about frequency shift is carried in the shape of...

It is a bit like Quantum Mechanics in that respect, but I would stay away from the ideas of Prof Feynman and co for now.

I think that there may well be a problem with some USB Asynch implementations given the number of posts I have seen from people reporting this. ASynch USB should perform better than SPDIF with no jitter being introduced by the comms clocking or disc reads, but that relies on both ends of the USB...

  Ping them and ask. The UK dealer was pretty efficient and got back to me after 2 or 3 days of my enquiry. It worked out slightly cheaper for me than buying from Schiit direct.

  Er no, I don't think that I said that did I? If I implied it then I certainly didn't intend to. All I said was that I have a far better understanding than I did 6 months ago and it has taken a great deal of time and effort to get there because of the factors I listed. I have also identified...

  Yes you are absolutely right about that. Have you managed to figure out Decibels on your own yet? I think that Crosstalk, Harmonic Distortion, and wow and flutter are all forms of distortion which the human auditory system is either able to filter out, or finds inoffensive and often...

and you go on to make some!   Good spot Stefan. I hold my hand up on that.   It isn't easy to get the right balance of rigor and completeness vs clarity. But I am trying.

I agree this is extremely helpful. All of Purrin's observations support my understanding (or current theory, since it is not accepted by anyone apart from me at the moment) of how 'information' about music is transmitted to our auditory system and how this is affected by different formats and...

Keep the Lawyer jokes coming. Love 'em.

I hope there aren't too many Engineers out there who are bad at Math.

I have an even worse habit of combining humour with confrontation.

  The analogy of light and printing often works when trying to understand audio, but it is only an analogy and it has a big hole so it often falls over. We receive visual information in a 'parallel interface', all at the same time, whereas we receive sound information as a 'serial interface'...

Sorry you have misunderstood. I am not using the word 'coherence' as a general descriptive term. It is a specific term as applied to sound waves and means 'how similar they are to one another'. So if a reproduced signal was compared with the original source then it would be very 'coherent' if...

  You haven't actually read any of the things I have written. You have just assumed I must be wrong, picked a few random words out and then replayed an old tape that might fit, on the assumption that replaying an old explanation is all I need. That is patronising and insulting. I haven't...

  Well if you have a degree in Math then you should be able to read what I have said and realise that though I have used the term 'information' in a way that a non Mathematician will still understand, I have also used it correctly as a precise Mathematical term. I do indeed mean 'Information'...

  Wow this is starting to feel like an episode of 'Lost'. Could someone tell me who the mysterious Currawong is and what we may have done to incur his wrath?

  "In 2005-2006 I sold or gave it all away" You .......... did................what ???? Please reassure me that this was at the behest of some female member of our species, and not just an act of wanton vandalism. If you haven't admitted to yourself already that you regret that, then you...

  Sorry I meant to reply to this earlier. You may be right. It is certainly true that a lot of confusing terminology has been introduced into digital audio from the analogue world. The term 'signal conditioner' is entirely inappropriate for anything in a digital circuit . You only ever...

  I agree and that is why many of us sometimes find the sound from a decent (but not outrageous) vinyl set-up to be preferable to a DAC (with 16/44, but the jury is still out on 24/192 for me). The thing that is most important to our ears is how 'coherent' the sound wave produced by our HiFi...

Deep joy this morning in the 'BackToAnalogue' household. My new Bifrost Uber has just arrived. A quick once over and running my finger around the edges and it is perfect, and could probably be pressed into service as a paper cutter if required. No chips or any other blemish. Looking at the...

  Spot on. The best jokes have two punchlines. And you get the second one a few microseconds (or seconds even) after the first one. :>) spoils that.