usb dac for hi-end system

Your gear is state of the art. You will only be dissapointed with USB-even through the wavelength as suggested into your DAC. Asychroneous or not, usb transmits in packets-music should be a stream. If you get a mac, put it in the next room and get a squeezebox touch or someother gateway but USB won't cut it for you. If it has a firewire out option, thats much better than usb.

No offense taken, Ghasley. I had meant the music data was packeted via USB. It is not packeted via firewire.

Raise the flag all you wish. I'm not entering another debate on usb vs firewire. Firewire is easilly superior. It is well documented. I have been studying this for years. USB is for connecting peripherials, ie mouse, printers, keyboards. (Think IRQ's, taxing CPU's,... I can go on and on). Firewire is and always was for audio.

Just listen to the very best usb implementation of audio. It is not very good. Please don't come back and debate it. Just go listen to USB and then to firewire. If you have not compared directly by listening, well, you should.

No. Better but still, no. USB is still a very poor interface. All pro recording studios use firewire - must be for a reason, no? (everything we try to reproduce onour rigs was doe with firewire, not usb). Just look at the technology and history of both. USB is for mice, keyboards, printers - not music. I won't say USB doesn't sound decent in some system, but far from what can be accomplished by computers or music servers from a firewire interface. All still needs to be implemented properly but we should not dismiss the inferiority of USB. I, for one, just can't believe how many mfg's are actually trying to make USB work, or, actually, sell it to us.