JezA;613469 Wrote: > Interesting stuff John. > > A key question to me is: Which system architecture offers the best > prospects - a renderer feeding an external DAC via USB or s/pdif, or a > 'one-box' network player. With a network player the processor and > network stuff must have an influence on the ground plane which will > influence the DAC, as it's in the same box; you can lose that problem > by putting the DAC in another box, but then as you point out, you get > issues from the USB or s/pdif connection. So, which way of doing it is > better in principle?
Theoretically the single box solution is best, BUT you can't cut any corners. You need to use separate power supplies (and I mean completely separate supplies, separate transformers, recitifers, regulators etc), isolate the DAC side from the digital side, put the DAC and digital stuff in separate shielded sections of the box and use those previously mentioned ground management techniques. IF you do all this the results are spectacular. But the temptation is severe to compromise, in particular its MUCH cheaper to only us one power supply, but then no matter what you do the grounds are connected together and you will get bleed through from the relatively large ground noise on the digital side into the analog side. The upshot is that pretty much anything you buy on the market today is a compromise of one sort or another. The trick is finding the compromise that YOU like the best! There are several well known DACs that tout their jitter immunity, this is achieved by using real jitter reduction techniques, but because of poor power supply design and poor parts selection they really are NOT low jitter. Yes they are fairly imune to input jitter, BUT thats because the intrinsic internal jitter is so high it swamps anything coming from the input. The marketing departments love to show off their lowered input sensitivity, but thats only because they have high jitter to begin with, they never talk about THAT! John S. -- JohnSwenson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=84903 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
