If you spend hundreds of pounds on a Naim s/pdif lead, is it the zeros that are more 'zero-ey' or the ones that are more 'one-like'? Do you get more 0s with a Naim lead, or more 1s? Do they come in a different order? Did they go to a better school? The Naim DAC purports to buffer and re-clock the data; it doesn't retrieve the clock-signal from the data stream, so surely if the design is any good it should work with any vaguely decent lead, unless of course it is susceptible to other kinds of intereference, such as RF, which would be a pity in such an expensive product.
"Do it right" at the very least means doing it in such a way that s/pdif leads are not part of the solution, for the very reason that, as you tell me, they can affect the sound of a (re-buffering re-clocking) DAC! If you have a cd transport, s/pdif is a pretty much unavoidable necessity. If your data is on a hard-drive s/pdif is completely avoidable, as the Transporter, Squeezebox and Linn DS gear demonstrates. -- JezA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JezA's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=21219 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=74471 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
