[MH79]

I'm looking around here, and I'm seeing a lot of people are using USB DAC's. I guess the SP/DIF DAC would have to be externally powered, while the USB DAC could be powered from the USB port.

I was wondering if there are many DAC's around that can use SP/DIF outputs from my soundcard, as my soundcard has ASIO drivers (which I need for music production).

 

[grawk]

The big advantage a usb only dac can have is that the processing can be entirely in i2s, which is more jitter resistant. The advantage to spdif is it can handle higher sample rates.

 

[error401]

Pretty much the only thing I can think of is that a USB DAC can be connected directly to any computer, regardless of how bad it's sound hardware is.

It is more difficult to design a jitter-resistant USB device than a jitter-resistant SPDIF device.

 

[milamber]

But with say a Mac which can have an optical out, there isn't a preferential connection out of the mac?

 

[sejarzo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grawk /img/forum/go_quote.gif The advantage to spdif is it can handle higher sample rates.

If you are thinking of standard Windows USB Audio devices that are limited to 48kHz rates, then yes.......but "prosumer" devices have the ability to do 24/192 via USB 2.0 with device specific drivers.

 

[MH79]

Ok, USB may be the easier option then. Does anyone know if the DAC's have ASIO drivers with can achieve a latency of less than 5ms?

 

[Maniac]

USB DAC using BurrBrown(TI) chipset is quite surprisingly good in terms of performance. The one me and my friend choose (PCM2702) offers one of the best analog output quality around, at the cost of no digital output of any kind. Other sibling of the chip that offers I2S or SPDIF, all of them have lower analog performance for some reason.

The jitter resistence of PCM270x/290x series of chips is quite good, due to the interesting design of its receiver section using SpAct tracking of USB clock, and IMHO it is one of the best around. Especially when you consider it works as a standard USB device that needs no additional/custom driver.

I believe if you want ASIO, there's some interesting tools on the net that provides ASIO to a lot of devices, even USB DAC.

 

[sejarzo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeHunt79 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ok, USB may be the easier option then. Does anyone know if the DAC's have ASIO drivers with can achieve a latency of less than 5ms?

Here's a link to an article on the E-MU 0404 USB that might give you some insight on latency and USB devices that use ASIO......seems as if there can be some disparity between the way manufacturers report that for their devices/drivers:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan0...es/emu0404.htm