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Streamer output options

In my younger days, I was told so often that spdif was better than usb that it became doctrine.  I'm in the market for a 2k$ish streamer and I see many higher end streamers with usb outputs that pass far higher res data than the spdif 192/24 does. My DAC takes either, but not i2s. Are the new implementations of usb now better than spdif? 

pprocter
nwres's avatar
nwres
249 posts
 

Im my experience DAC designers make choices to best meet their objectives. And there is no definitive answer as to which input will sound best on a given DAC. It seems to be case by case. Some are optimized for one input, others try and make them all sound the same. And modern implementations of USB can be excellent, when the designer makes it so. Read the reviews of your DAC and read between the line to determine if your DAC is optimized for USB. 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,302 posts
 

What DAC is it? There’s no definitive answer to your question. Highly dependent on dac and streamer. USB implementation in both units, quality of DAC clock and jitter rejection properties. If you use spdif you’ll be relying on the clock that’s in your streamer. 

pprocter OP
32 posts
 

I have a Mytek Liberty 2. It's a couple of years old, so totally obsolete! 😀 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,302 posts
 

No not really obsolete. With that DAC I would try both USB and spdif. Need warm sounding cable with mytek. 

rbstehno
1,473 posts
 

I never use usb. Spdif has restrictions on what you can send thru it. If you are paying hires music, say dsd128 or dsd256, you are out of luck. Also, you are restricted to 192/24 files. 
If you are only using a cd player, this wouldn’t matter. I haven’t used a cd player in almost 20 years.

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