Recommendation for Computer/Digital

You have some pretty nice pieces. And there is no way that you can get a traditional source of suitable quality for anywhere near $500.

I think that you will do well with a stock SB - just upgrade the power supply and be sure to use a pair of ICs that is as good as the rest of your system - after all its a source... What you will have to do to get great sound (mod or stock) is do a good job of ripping - no hope for MP3s...

As Matt points out, you can always send the SB away later. Or you can add a DAC or the mod and a DAC.

BTW I agree with your overall approach and went much the same route myself - no regrets. In fact, with the modded SB units I go analog out to the preamp. From a dollar point of view this means that I have also skipped the DAC, the extra pair of ICs and the extra premium source power cable, plus the tweaks for the DAC. When you start to add all that up, it makes the mods look like a total bargain.

Don't sweat the jitter. You remove so much grunge by dumping the electro-mechanical-optical complexities of real time playback that what's left is simply not an issue for most folks.

There are some USB DACs in the middle, notably from Scott Nixon. SB2-3 is the other standard choice. There is a clear upgrade path available starting with a $20 linear power supply.

Since you are a Mac guy and will be using iTunes and ripping Apple Lossless, the choice between USB and SB really comes down to lifestyle and convenience. USB is great if you want it in the room where the system and the computer are. If you want to wire the house or access the computer from another room, SB has the advantage as it is a network device.

Either way you are looking at plug and play. The big effort will be ripping your CDs.

Have fun

Hi Karavite -

Ya know, there are Mac people and there are PC people. EAC/FLAC/Foobar is clearly a good way to go but it puts a certain onus on the user to make it all work. iTunes on the other hand does the work for you. There is an ongoing debate about whether Apple Lossless (ALAC) or any lossless format for that matter which would include FLAC, can be as good as an uncompressed, unprocessed WAV or AIFF file - this seems to come mostly from the PC side because there is some evidence that ALAC doesn't work as well on PCs as it does on a Mac. As best as I can tell, these are very small differences, not gross ones - I have no first hand experience since PCs give me a rash...

If you are truly persnickety and have a highly resolving system you might compare ALAC and WAV and decide for yourself. The problem actually comes with the way the various file formats handle metadata (called tags) such as album info, artwork etc. ALAC integrates beautifully with iTunes - you have a single, easy to use application that makes it easy to manage every aspect of the experience.

For my part I'll leave the rest on the table.

Hi -

I am not sure about the nuances of the tagging issue but clearly it can be a bear. iTunes (which is a database program at its core) - has its own data management scheme for storing the Gracenote data. (Gracenote is the databased that iTunes hooks up to in order to retrieve all the information it populates when you rip a CD, except for album art.)

Based on some quick research it seems that "the Itunes software can store the Gracenote data in it's database instead of storing it a file tag, but then if you switch players (or the itunes database is corrupted) you lose the data from Gracenote (can't move the Gracenote data to another player like you can with true file tags)."

As far as the SB goes - it automatically imports data from iTunes - at least ALAC. I am not sure if it gets it al (eg the composer) but it certainly gets anything you might reasonably need to find and play a cut. But just for the record, though the two applications share a passing resemblance, iTunes is a much more powerful database.

For simplicity, I always create my playlists in iTunes, then access them from the SB. I also find this works well on the iPod. IMHO neither the SB remote display nor the iPod are very convenient for sorting through large collections quickly - and SB software has no facility for creating Smart Playlists.

Finally, I have no idea if any human can tell the difference but please report your findings - there is no doubt that the online community is split on this one! Classic case of YMMV...

If you survey the posts on PC Audio, you will quickly discover that using a soundcard is not the way to go. It is very, very difficult to get clean audio out of the PC environment. That is why USB and Ethernet are so attractive - in both cases its about getting the data away from the PCs electro-magnetic interior before converting back to an analog signal.