Good for you! Where were you two years ago? Sounds like you already have a roadmap. I like that you'll have an in-store system. If you let customers demo at home, even better.
The hard part is getting a PC source feeding a DAC to sound as good or better than a transport feeding a DAC. We're at a point where USB (or USB converted to I2S) from a PC into a DAC is the same or better than the best transports feeding a DAC. It took many months of research and trial and error before I got to this stage. It would have been great to have had a knowledgeable retailer to go to. It takes the right setup, otherwise the sound is just mediocre.
My advice, which is worth what you're paying for it, is to help customers implement systems that
- 1) are not dead ends (file formats are not proprietary, tags are portable to other programs, unlimited scalability of storage and location of storage, etc.);
- 2) have wireless remote control;
- 3) have the least amount of jitter possible into the dac (a soundcard or SPDI/F directly into a dac doesn't compare well implemented USB); and
- 4) have media software that does bit-perfect ripping and bit-perfect playback.
Not sure if you're looking to get that complicated. But if you're planning to cater to audiophools, you'll need to provide solutions that work with their existing dacs without losing sound quality. On the otherhand, if you cater to the masses who'll just plug into a receiver, that's obviously much easier and you'll make more money.
My final advice, since you asked, is to sell Empirical Audio interfaces, because they do #3 better than anyone (let the slings and arrows fly) :o)
The hard part is getting a PC source feeding a DAC to sound as good or better than a transport feeding a DAC. We're at a point where USB (or USB converted to I2S) from a PC into a DAC is the same or better than the best transports feeding a DAC. It took many months of research and trial and error before I got to this stage. It would have been great to have had a knowledgeable retailer to go to. It takes the right setup, otherwise the sound is just mediocre.
My advice, which is worth what you're paying for it, is to help customers implement systems that
- 1) are not dead ends (file formats are not proprietary, tags are portable to other programs, unlimited scalability of storage and location of storage, etc.);
- 2) have wireless remote control;
- 3) have the least amount of jitter possible into the dac (a soundcard or SPDI/F directly into a dac doesn't compare well implemented USB); and
- 4) have media software that does bit-perfect ripping and bit-perfect playback.
Not sure if you're looking to get that complicated. But if you're planning to cater to audiophools, you'll need to provide solutions that work with their existing dacs without losing sound quality. On the otherhand, if you cater to the masses who'll just plug into a receiver, that's obviously much easier and you'll make more money.
My final advice, since you asked, is to sell Empirical Audio interfaces, because they do #3 better than anyone (let the slings and arrows fly) :o)