Seeking adv for pc audio set up for Passlabs amps

I just bought the USB Ayre QB-9. This is the DAC you want unless you can afford dCS gear.

Alan, Thanks for price list n I have sent the email msg
to your address. Please respond to me your suggestion.

Rabbani

Hi,

I believe the Ayre lists for $2500.00 and the Wavelength Cosecant lists for $3500.00.

Alan

Thank you for your feedback. First of all I am not a familiar person in computers. I need to learn the things.

M/time Can you tell me price for your dac (wavelenth n Ayre)? becoz there is no dealer for those products in my place.

Secondly I will email you for my doubts and about the equipments required.

Hi,

I use a computer transport into my Pass Labs XA 100.5 amplifiers. I set up a low powered PC (a Fit-PC Slim) to act as a network player, which feeds a Wavelength Cosecant v3 USB DAC. I use a preamp in between the DAC and amps.

I put a small SSD drive in the Fit-PC Slim, which in turn makes it absolutely silent. The music library is stored on another computer on my home network, outside of the listening room, where I can keep larger and noisier drives.

An advantage of setting up a PC as a network player is that I don't need to keep a keyboard, mouse nor monitor in the listening room. Music selection is done via a Squeezebox Duet remote control, a laptop, or an iPod Touch (or iPhone). You could do something similar with a Mac Mini if you are an Apple user.

I've built many different music servers over the years, tried a number of different DACs and sound cards, but have been most happy with the performance of this particular setup.

I don't know what your DAC budget is, but you would probably get better performance choosing a DAC that can be fed directly by the PC without having to use a converter. I haven't tried the M-Audio solo converter, but I do have a couple of M-Audio sound cards. They are ok, but not outstanding. I would recommend an asynchronous USB or Firewire DAC. Wavelength, Ayre, and Weiss are among the higher end manufacturers of such technology. There are a number of pro audio manufacturers of firewire DACs, and the E-Mu 0404 USB is also asynchronous with very high value to dollar ratio for a budget solution.

You can email me at aljordan at gmail dot com if you would like more information on the various solutions I've tried.

Alan