JohnSwenson wrote: > > When doing it yourself you have a wide range of options available for > including in the device, that would be very difficult to add to an > existing board. For example as has been mentioned having FPGA based > filters is something that is easy to add to our own board, and adds very > little cost. I can easily put in a VERY high quality S/PDIF interface > that will be better than just about anything out there, or even a USB > output optimized for audio use. > Having S/PDIF interface will make it more attractive to a lot of people. There are a lot of people who already have an amplifier in their listening room, being able to just connect the device to one of the digital inputs of the amplifier will make it a lot easier than forcing everyone to acquire an external USB DAC. Making it easy for more people to use it is going to be important if you like to get more volumes in the future, with only support for USB I'm afraid you are going to be restricted to selling it to geeks and audiophiles.
JohnSwenson wrote: > > I'm a little torn on one aspect of this, my passion is for very high > quality DACs, having done systems similar to this several times I CAN > say that I can do a better job for less money building very good DACs > into the project than you can get by buying external DACs. It doesn't > HAVE to be an either or. I can do a two board system, one board has the > main guts and digital audio interfaces (S/PDIF USB) and another board > that plugs in which has the DACs (it does NOT connect to the S/PDIF or > USB). So if you want to spend the extra $400 you can get audio quality > that will out perform external DACs costing many thousands. It is just > so much easier to do a really good job of a DAC if you can build it into > the architecture of the main system. > For someone who is satisfied with the quality of the DAC in the Touch, how much price difference would it be between a board without a DAC and a board with a DAC with similar quality as the Squeezebox Touch ? If we assume the low volume scenario, are we talking about $400 extra or is it a lot less ? I suspect a built-in DAC is mainly critical for people who want to connect the device to powered speakers, if you already have an external amplifier that's likely going to have digital inputs so you can just use the S/PDIF output. Based on this, I think the DAC either have to be an optional part for audiophiles (as you suggested) who aren't satisfied with the DAC in their external amplifier, or if it's included on the standard board it would have to be something which doesn't increase the price too much since its main purpose would be to be able to attract users who want to connect it to powered speakers where top notch audio quality isn't as critical as in the main listening room. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97881 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
