I have a feeling this has been asked 100 times before, and I remember contributing to a thread where this was discussed, but don't recall seeing any conclusions....
Is it better to use a SPDI/F output (e.g. in most cases optical) to transfer digital audio from a laptop to a DAC, than USB? I read somewhere that because of the fact that a USB interface sends data in 'packets' rather than a continuous stream of bits according to a 'clock', it inherently introduces jitter and hence is not as good sound-quality wise, once the data has been decoded to analogue.
However do DACs with USB inputs have someway of mitigating this by re-clocking the incoming data - is that dependent on how good the DAC is?
I started another thread today about how good the Sonos systems were and ended up concluding that I'd ultimately like to go for a computer based system consisting of a macbook and a Cyrus DAC-X. However this would be rather costly, and I already have a windows laptop. The only 2 things making it unsuitable are 1) hard-drive size and 2) the fact that the spdi/f output is only carried over the HDMI connection (no optical).
The hard drive could probably be upgraded, which leaves only the connection issue. If USB would be a suitable way of connecting to a DAC - without losing out on quality grounds to spdi/f - then all I need is a USB-equipped DAC.
Any thoughts?
Is it better to use a SPDI/F output (e.g. in most cases optical) to transfer digital audio from a laptop to a DAC, than USB? I read somewhere that because of the fact that a USB interface sends data in 'packets' rather than a continuous stream of bits according to a 'clock', it inherently introduces jitter and hence is not as good sound-quality wise, once the data has been decoded to analogue.
However do DACs with USB inputs have someway of mitigating this by re-clocking the incoming data - is that dependent on how good the DAC is?
I started another thread today about how good the Sonos systems were and ended up concluding that I'd ultimately like to go for a computer based system consisting of a macbook and a Cyrus DAC-X. However this would be rather costly, and I already have a windows laptop. The only 2 things making it unsuitable are 1) hard-drive size and 2) the fact that the spdi/f output is only carried over the HDMI connection (no optical).
The hard drive could probably be upgraded, which leaves only the connection issue. If USB would be a suitable way of connecting to a DAC - without losing out on quality grounds to spdi/f - then all I need is a USB-equipped DAC.
Any thoughts?