The obligatory disclaimer: I have no financial interest in sincaudio. All I know about their product is the info contained in their website.
If you think about it the TACT really is just a dedicated computer, customized software and a few pieces of added hardware (mic, mic preamp, digital I/O). There's no reason why a generic PC could not be employed to run the software. There are any number of quality cards that offer digital I/O in either coax or XLR format that would allow the connection of the PC beween a CD transport and D/A converter. There are also a few products that offer Firewire I/O with built in mic preamps.
One of the advantages of the TACT approach is that as an integrated product it can be fully optimized to take maximum advantage of the individual pieces of hardware. TACT claims that their DSP chips are specially designed for audio processing. An off the shelf Intel processor is not audio optimized, but this relative disadvantage can be overcome with clever programming. It also should be possible to put together a Sincaudio system for less dollars than a TACT.
I recently purchased a TACT 2.0 and I'm still in the process of getting it optimized within my system. The initial results are quite positive, but there is still work to do. I certainly don't regret my purchase, but the Sincaudio seems interesting and I'm just looking for feedback from someone who has tried it.
If you think about it the TACT really is just a dedicated computer, customized software and a few pieces of added hardware (mic, mic preamp, digital I/O). There's no reason why a generic PC could not be employed to run the software. There are any number of quality cards that offer digital I/O in either coax or XLR format that would allow the connection of the PC beween a CD transport and D/A converter. There are also a few products that offer Firewire I/O with built in mic preamps.
One of the advantages of the TACT approach is that as an integrated product it can be fully optimized to take maximum advantage of the individual pieces of hardware. TACT claims that their DSP chips are specially designed for audio processing. An off the shelf Intel processor is not audio optimized, but this relative disadvantage can be overcome with clever programming. It also should be possible to put together a Sincaudio system for less dollars than a TACT.
I recently purchased a TACT 2.0 and I'm still in the process of getting it optimized within my system. The initial results are quite positive, but there is still work to do. I certainly don't regret my purchase, but the Sincaudio seems interesting and I'm just looking for feedback from someone who has tried it.