HOW SET UP A DAC

[star]

how do I set up a dac to my laptop ,am lost with all these names ,spdif cable ,fire wire to usb,halide design bridge ,thunderbolt, which takes me to best use out of the setting ?

 

[ID.]

You asked the same question in the HiFi forum and I believe someone replied that we need to know what DAC and other equipment you have to provide the best answer.

How can we tell you if we don't know what connections your laptop and DAC have? If it is confusing you, it's easiest just to connect the output of one to the input of the other (e.g. spidf to spidf, USB to USB) rather than worrying about converting from one to the other (e.g. fire wire to USB, etc.).

To help narrow things down, I don't know of any DACs that use Apple's proprietory Thunderbolt connection.

 

[audioaffair]

Most laptops should have a USB output, which many DACS happily accept, this is by far the easiest way of connecting in a laptop.

 

[star]

usb would be the siplest way to connect but is it not the best choise ?

this am reading out of post in forum for sound ; http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?147355-Chord-QuteHD-dac-Empirical-Off-Ramp-4

then looking what or4 is about ;http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/best-universal-serial-bus-industry-standard-cables-connectors-and-communications-protocols-between-computers-and-electronic-devices-spdif-converter-12904/index3.html

The OR4 I bought used. It is fully loaded with all the extra options (dual Turbo Clock option, the USB Hynes Regulator option, and the upgraded RCA SPDIF output). Before the purchase I asked Steve Nugent which would sound better, a fully loaded OR4 or a stock OR5 and he said it was close. So with that I pulled the trigger on the OR4.

The Chord by itself sounds just awesome. It sounds very full bodied, organic, with a nice big sound stage and very three dimensional. With the OR4, everything just increases. Voices and instruments sound more clear and distinct with more natural decay to them. The sound stage went from big to HUGE! There is a nice warmth I'm hearing too. Now it sounds like a great vinyl rig. I've never heard computer audio sound this good before. Very natural sounding.

 

[star]

here more on that ;

I also found the QuteHD to sound bright and alive at first. As it broke in more, this subsided, but the biggest improvement was when I upgraded the power supply to an MCRU linear power supply. The improved power supply made the dac have more weight, eliminated any brightness on the top, and increased the soundstage so that it sounded bigg..

 

[star]

and here another aspect related to power supply ,relates to sound quality ;

That is what I said, but I cannot stress enough that the quality of the clocking is greatly associated with power supply and ground plane currents, not to mention internal em/rfi. The inner workings of a DACreek havoc in those items, and it should be noted that the Weiss DAC202 uses a single clock with a PLL, and yet had the lowest jitterthey had measured to date at the time of that review. Point being is that Gordon Rankin's argument is theoretical. Actual applications vary greatly, and getting a good signal down a properly tuned and terminated connection offers a lot in relation to the harsh environment within the DAC itself. I am certain companies such as dCS would just put it internally if they thought they could provide better clocking by doing so. Even Antelope offers an outboard oscillator for their high end devices, further improving the performance of their word clocks. General Radio would put them in a shielded sub enclosure on the other side of the chassis in theirs to reduce interactions.

sorry can no longer copy paste the url ,since that trigers the spam signal of this site