- Aug 10, 2019
- 2,556
- 5
- 0
(Edit: After a night of staying up reading about audio equipment and then eventually falling asleep at the desk ive decided to change my post. Originally I rambled on for at least 2 pages about my life and my unsatisfactory purchase of studio monitors, not for me.)
First of all i'd like to say hello, i've finally decided to sign up on here after a year of heavy reading and lurking on here
In short, I have decided to upgrade to a separate Hi-fi set up this time round, as i've learnt this is always going to be the best way to listen to digital music over a computers onboard sound card. Ive had a problem working out the idle setup for me. I want to be able to access my very large lossless collection. Sure there alot of methods for hooking up an iPod to an amp, but many methods involve audio quality loss (im not sure how much is lost) because i hear it is converted between analog and digital, back and forth through the ipods dac etc etc. I want to actually make use of my lossless digital music bit-for-bit. Now I have seen the streaming devices out there but I don't have £1000s to spend on just transporting my files.
I was GOING to purchase Marantz PM6003, the CD6003, and a pair of Wharfedale diamond 10.1. I thought my prayers were answered when i saw the Marantz CD6003 with its iPod compatibility until I read that the Marantz doesn't utilise its main DAC for decoding files from USB but in fact uses a cheap NEC uPD63901 microcontroller (designed for use in car audio head units), and can't even output via digital outputs. Therefore the sound quality from usb devices and iPods, is apparently not close to that of CD and seeing as I wouldn't be buying the system for the cd player capability i have realised that thats probably not the best option. So that purchase is scrapped.
Then I was considering some kind of digital dock such as the Wadia system and connect my ipod to an amp but that then bought up further problems like still needing to buy a DAC, and interface not being the easiest.
I've grown up with digital and will no doubt stay using it its convenience and equality to CD with lossless (with the right setup). I just need to know the right way to use the digital lossless signal, I know that the less transcoding there is going on the better it will be, i just need to know what is the best way to do this.
Is it even neccesary to have DAC when you intend to output digitally from a source such as a computer? Is it not possible to output via digital from the PC directly to the amp?
If not would you recommend a DacMagic connected to the PC? Does the DacMagic overide the PCs DAC/soundcard proccessing (my sound card is very low end in terms of quality and i don't intend on upgrading it)
And how well does a PC + DacMagic + Amp + Speakers setup stack up against using a Wadia iTransport + DacMagic + Amp + Speakers. I don't see any real advantage in using the Wadia iTransport over a PC.
Would be great if you could help me out ladies and gentlement, cheers
First of all i'd like to say hello, i've finally decided to sign up on here after a year of heavy reading and lurking on here

In short, I have decided to upgrade to a separate Hi-fi set up this time round, as i've learnt this is always going to be the best way to listen to digital music over a computers onboard sound card. Ive had a problem working out the idle setup for me. I want to be able to access my very large lossless collection. Sure there alot of methods for hooking up an iPod to an amp, but many methods involve audio quality loss (im not sure how much is lost) because i hear it is converted between analog and digital, back and forth through the ipods dac etc etc. I want to actually make use of my lossless digital music bit-for-bit. Now I have seen the streaming devices out there but I don't have £1000s to spend on just transporting my files.
I was GOING to purchase Marantz PM6003, the CD6003, and a pair of Wharfedale diamond 10.1. I thought my prayers were answered when i saw the Marantz CD6003 with its iPod compatibility until I read that the Marantz doesn't utilise its main DAC for decoding files from USB but in fact uses a cheap NEC uPD63901 microcontroller (designed for use in car audio head units), and can't even output via digital outputs. Therefore the sound quality from usb devices and iPods, is apparently not close to that of CD and seeing as I wouldn't be buying the system for the cd player capability i have realised that thats probably not the best option. So that purchase is scrapped.
Then I was considering some kind of digital dock such as the Wadia system and connect my ipod to an amp but that then bought up further problems like still needing to buy a DAC, and interface not being the easiest.
I've grown up with digital and will no doubt stay using it its convenience and equality to CD with lossless (with the right setup). I just need to know the right way to use the digital lossless signal, I know that the less transcoding there is going on the better it will be, i just need to know what is the best way to do this.
Is it even neccesary to have DAC when you intend to output digitally from a source such as a computer? Is it not possible to output via digital from the PC directly to the amp?
If not would you recommend a DacMagic connected to the PC? Does the DacMagic overide the PCs DAC/soundcard proccessing (my sound card is very low end in terms of quality and i don't intend on upgrading it)
And how well does a PC + DacMagic + Amp + Speakers setup stack up against using a Wadia iTransport + DacMagic + Amp + Speakers. I don't see any real advantage in using the Wadia iTransport over a PC.
Would be great if you could help me out ladies and gentlement, cheers
