Jump in now or wait?

Herman - no, the reads from the hard drive should be error-free. Its the spooling from memory out to the device that has no error correction.

Steve N.

There is no error correction in iTunes playback. It just reads the data and spools it out, either PCI, USB or WiFi depending on your device. There may be multiple reads when ripping, but no error correction on playback.

WiFi because it is networked has retry and error detection built-in, just like for your print jobs.

There are of course, better USB and WiFi DAC's coming in the future. It is up to you whether you want to wait for them. The DAC-1 can always be sold on Audiogon.

Dokosan - no problem with USB. Even though it does not have error correction, if you stay shorter than the max USB cable length of 5 meters, you should be fine.

However, you should be aware that not all computers USB ports behave well with streaming audio. Only certain USB ports on a give computer or laptop will work well and some computers, such as inexpensive Dell laptops are terrible for streaming audio. You cannot get rid of the pops and clicks no matter what you try. I recommend Toshiba laptops.

I use the same USB firmware that the DAC-1 uses for my products and for most cases it works perfectly.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Herman - what you need to understand is that the transport protocol that is used for streaming audio over USB is different than that used for printers and disk drives over USB. There is no retry and no error correction for streaming audio. Because streaming audio is real-time and these other peripherals are not, it uses an entirely different protocol. In fact there are actually several different isochronous USB protocols that can be used for audio streaming, all without retry or error detection/correction.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Dokosan - change the fuses to 3 amp fast-blo while you're at it, (at your own risk).

Steve N.