Audiophile USB to PCM

Ultraviolet -- hey man, the U24 came first so I've had it plugged in and have not tested the Audiophile. Unfortunately the weak link in my system is my larger than life ROOM! It is 45' l x 24' w x 20' h. Yeah, 20' ceilings. You wouldn't believe how these ML Request electrostats disappear in this room.

So I am probably not the best judge of source sound quality right now... U24 sounds good to my ear though, no better or worse than a CD source (although I do not have a high end CD source). Will let you know here if I decide to pull this Audiophile out of the box. Thanks for all your posts.

What is wrong with using your SB2 feeding into your dCS?
I am going to use the SB2 feeding into my EMM Labs...

my path is about to be: RME PCI card output to DCS elgar+ for conversion with the card's WC slaved to the elgar in mastermode. the RME card claims to output 24/192 but isn't my signal from the PC stuck at 16/44? is it even possible to output 24/192 through AES/EBU or digital outs from a PC? if so, is this a function of the source files i'm using? i'm using masterclock mode to reduce jitter, but is this worth it if the signal is stuck at 16/44 and i'm not upsampling at all?

Rk_t, I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm sure someone could write software (or maybe it exists) to use the PC processor to upsample, but... seems to me that would be pretty processor intensive and subject to the vagaries of whatever other daemons or processes demand CPU time. I'm guessing you are better off matching your Elgar with a dCS Purcell if the upsampling really matters to you...

Rk_t, Empirical Audio's web site (Audioengr in this thread) suggests that one should use Foobar software to upconvert to 24/96, because it allegedly is better than hardware upsampling. There may be other software that upconverts to 24/192?

At the moment, what you suggest seems like the way to go: PC card outputting upsampled digital via AES/EBU, with card driven by DAC wordclock. As long as the card is not processing the signal, only outputting an upconverted but otherwise untainted PCM signal from disk. Seems like a better solution than a USB-to-digital converter that is not driven by a wordclock. I'm new at this, so if anyone disagrees or has the best way to go from PC to DAC, I'd also appreciate the suggestions.