usb dac for hi-end system

Emre,

I took a look at your system and you have an awesome DAC in the DCS. Your best bet at this time if you have a Mac would be to get the Wavelength Wavelink USB to SPDIF and then plug into your DCS. That is a $900 US solution, and he includes cabling necessary to connect. If you have a windows based PC you might want to consider installing a Lynx sound card and output aes/ebu digital.

I am unaware of a USB DAC that is clearly superior to your DCS stack. I haven't searched that hard though to be honest in the price range you are accustomed to. You've got a $15,000 dac....your best bet is to adapt the computer to access your dac rather than the other way around. Good luck.

Cerrot, the blanket statement that you made about "music should be streamed not packets" is mistaken. Data is transmitted in packets, blocks or other groupings, whether through FireWire, USB or wireless and is buffered, it's not music until the conversion process begins. NO CHANCE a squeezebox into a dac will outperform a properly implemented computer out through USB to USB DAC. The packets et al that are transmitted wirelessly are MUCH smaller than through a USB. No offense intended if taken.

The Ayre is a very good USB dac but it is not the end of story. You need to listen to several in your system. The Ayre is optimized to run on USB and only offers a USB input. The technology Ayre utilizes is licensed from Wavelength which was a smart move on their part. There are several other options out there however that exceed the Ayre's performance but at it's price point it is a terrific value.