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Interfacing Computer Music to D/A Converter ?

I'm really unfamiliar with this territory, perhaps someone can shed some light. Or links for more info.

Say i have a laptop computer and i store songs in my laptop either i-tunes or aiff files or applelossless.

I have a Benchmark dac 1. How do i interface the two in such that my laptop becomes the transport / source which can feed the songs to the Benchmark which in turn plays music to my hi fi system ?

Is using my laptop a better transport that say a dedicated cd player like marantz or pioneer dvd player ?

tks for info. highly appreciated.
nolitan

Showing 3 responses by audioengr

audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Undertow - I add it to the DAC-1 for $500 and to the DEQX for about $750. Depends on the DAC and which board I use.

I can add it to almost ANY DAC easily and more cheaply with a wired version, but it will not address muting and Sample Rate decode. Then you must be careful about sequencing the power and not pulling the USB cable when powered-on etc.. If it is a capacitor-coupled DAC, then this is not as much of a concern.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
You have to make a choice: Wireless using Wi-Fi or USB cable. USB cable can give you better performance, and 24/96 capability. The only Wi-Fi box that has 24/96 is the Transporter. A good upsampler like SRC on a PC can bring amazing results, more like analog.

Airport Express only has Toslink output in stock form, so I would not recommend this. Toslink is the highest jitter interface. A modded version of AE is a different story. With AE you must use only iTunes player with either PC or MAC, so you have to like iTunes. Upsampling to 24/96 on MAC is not so great like on a PC.

The Squeezebox is quite popular as a transport, but also needs mods to sound good IMO. It will only do 16/44.1 and requires Slim Server as a player interface.

The possibility of eliminating the S/PDIF interface is another big advantage of computer driven audio. I2S interfaces are available to the Benchmark DAC-1 using USB interface to the computer. Using I2S can raise the quality of computer playback above that achievable using a transport.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Undertow - I can add high-performance USB to practically any DAC or even the DEQX, but the cost will depend on what is inside the DAC. The correct implementation is USB to I2S to D/A chip. Doing this has its pitfalls, namely muting and sample-rate decode. Unless these issues are addressed properly, functionality of the DAC will be lost or it may even output damaging DC at times. I would NOT trust this to an amateur modder. If the DAC contains a CS8414 or AD1896, then it makes it easier as I have boards designed already for these.

I already add USB or I2S interfaces to these routinely:
Benchmark DAC-1
Lite DAC-60
DEQX

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer
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