rOAdeh
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2005
- Posts
- 52
- Likes
- 10
Hi guys,
been researching DACs for a long time and finally have got the funds available to start looking into purchasing one
I'm pretty much set on the Apogee MiniDac which i plan to connect to both my PC and my CDP via optical and coax respectively.
I plan to buy an AV710 or HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold PCI Dolby Soundcard (for future surround sound DD encoding) and then output that to the DAC.
Right now I'm in a dilemma in that a new MiniDac with USB costs approx £850 here, whereas, I can buy a perfect condition second hand one without USB for £450. Unfortunately I can't find anywhere that is selling a 2nd hand version with USB. £400 is a lot of money to me, and I'm really struggling to see whether it would be worth that much of a premium to gain the USB benefits.
I am unlikely to use a laptop or anything in the near future that would mean i wouldn't have an optical out to get a bit perfect stream from so the only advantage to USB i can see is for future firmware downloads? Am I missing anything - is it worth getting the USB version?
Thanks in advance,
Ben
been researching DACs for a long time and finally have got the funds available to start looking into purchasing one
I'm pretty much set on the Apogee MiniDac which i plan to connect to both my PC and my CDP via optical and coax respectively.
I plan to buy an AV710 or HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold PCI Dolby Soundcard (for future surround sound DD encoding) and then output that to the DAC.
Right now I'm in a dilemma in that a new MiniDac with USB costs approx £850 here, whereas, I can buy a perfect condition second hand one without USB for £450. Unfortunately I can't find anywhere that is selling a 2nd hand version with USB. £400 is a lot of money to me, and I'm really struggling to see whether it would be worth that much of a premium to gain the USB benefits.
I am unlikely to use a laptop or anything in the near future that would mean i wouldn't have an optical out to get a bit perfect stream from so the only advantage to USB i can see is for future firmware downloads? Am I missing anything - is it worth getting the USB version?
Thanks in advance,
Ben