Please Help!! looking to get into computer audio.

Sorry - correction

" And, sure, I would rather have an async usb DAC rather than a SYNC one. "

I am also a little confused by all this. I have a large LP/CD library. My turntable desperately needs upgrading but I have an excellent universal disc player (Ayre). I have an Oppo BDP-105D which is not such a great disc player to my ears but works fine with USB and streaming Tidal. Here's my dilemma: If a music download can't equal the sound I can get from a SACD or DVD-A then it's not worth bothering with to me. I have downloaded a couple of HD Tracks albums in FLAC 192/24 and they sound very good but the files are HUGE, more than 5 GB. My entire music catalog in this format would require an entire farm of HDD's which seems like a sideways shift from physical media. Secondly, these downloads are pretty pricey IMHO, especially when you consider I can pick up mint condition used LP's, SACD's, DVD-A's, and what-not from sites like Discogs. I know that everyone more knowledgeable than I are making the shift so I must be missing something.

Gee @dtc it took a lot of typing before you got what I was saying and got mad at me for it.

I like ASRC by the way, and buffering and stuff like that. I don’t think the engineers at Bryston are crap. I just don’t think all jitter reduction solutions are equally good which is what I thought you wrote. There is a reason why the next generation incorporated Asynch-USB 2.0

I’m very happy that over the past decade or so Asynch-USB and high resolution audio have become so important that Macs and Linux now incorporate a standard USB 2.0 audio driver as part of their distributions. This is much better than the dark ages of Synch-USB or Asynch but with custom drivers needed.


Best,

Erik

@brenro I'm not sure what your core problem is though. :)  Are you saying you don't like downloads? If so, you are exactly the sort of person MQA was designed for. It offers to compress high resolution audio several fold without loss.

The Ayre IS a very nice player. How are you hooking it and the Oppo up to your sound though?  Is it analog out or are you using a DAC? 

I like the video and anime performance of Oppo, but um, not a fan of their internal DAC's. At least on the 103, I can't hear any benefit at all of SACD. However, the 105 has Asynch-USB 2.0 so it should make a great source for just about any outboard DAC. 

erick - I understand what your were saying all along. I just thought some of it was incorrectly or at least confused.  Let me explain.

Async usb is bit perfect, but so is reclocking. . You seemed to imply that aysnc usb it bit perfect but reclocking is not. Upsampling is not bit perfect, but nobody would claim it is and it is a separate process from reclocking.

Aysync usb and reclocking as are good as their clock, assuming a quality implementation.  Async usb and reclocking using the same clock should produce basically the same result as far as jitter is concerned. Once again, you seem to imply that async usb produces lower jitter than reclocking, which is not the case.

If you believe that async usb is superior to reclocking in terms of jitter, then we disagree. If you agree that properly implemented async usb and a reclocker are basically equal in terms of jitter, then we agree. All of this assumes a quality implementation with the same clocks.

As to why async usb is so popular,  clearly it is better than sync. It has also become a requirement as far as marketing is concerned. It is also easy to implement. There is no reason not to do it these days. But, that does not mean it is inherent better  than a good reclocker in terms of jitter.

And, yes, I do understand async usb.