Last link to my audio chain.

[[DANGERDAN]]

Well i have come a long way since i purchased my Klipsch RF83's and ever since and before i did i started a journey on what is probably the most expensive hobby but by far the most exciting and difficult part of my life. Addiction played a role in trying to pursue my understanding and perfection in audio technology and it started here in xtremesystems, thanks to the people like nano and steve who helped me in the beginning i managed to branch out by myself and further my perception on understanding it all.

I have recently purchased a Rotel 1582 to pair with my klipsch speakers which was a nice improvement to my sound and have been since enjoying it very much. And now i am about to complete my audio chain with a DAC unit, Dacmagic 100+ to be precise and thought id come to ask your views on it.
I remember back in my older threads we had a discussion about DAC chips, i think it was with enigma who stated that the wolfson chipsets were widely known for their tonal quality and lead me towards following them. I have come to the same conclusion and seen many people favor them especially in mobile phones which i think the galaxy s3 uses as well. I have had plenty of experience with burr brown chipsets which are widely used in a lot of devices like car audio head units and sound cards like d2x/stx and i do admit they are much nicer than standard audio chips more commonly found in cheaper devices.

Just to add to that i am worried about the forced upsampling which i am not a true believer of so don't know how much of a issue this will be.
Anywho love you all.

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/assets...-01English.pdf

[[DANGERDAN]]

Iv got my decision down to three dacs, all of which are available to me as most others are not. DACmagic plus Rotel RDD-06 Audiolab M-DAC The dacmagic seems to be the least of my favorite due to its layout of trying to upsample (forcefully) and i just don't agree with their agenda, that and having filters available to the user seems to me they are trying to manipulate the signal more than actually trying to reproduce something more linear. The real decision is between the Rotel and audiolab, both are beautiful and support many specs that i favour in a unit like this, the Rotel for example hosting the special and highly regarded God of all DACS which is the wolfson 8741 but doesn't have a headphone support/amp. The Audiolab however does and has another chip i see favoured by people in the audiophile scene, its a little more pricey but that's because of the headphone/preamp stage added to the circuitry. So out of the two really as i am not too keen on the DACmagic i have a big decision to make and a bit more research to do as well.

[billb]

What a breath of fresh air! Someone that buys audio equipment because it makes sense, not because of it's color/shape/friend has one/etc.

Kind of a side note, but are you aware of JRiver, and especially JPlay?
JPlay runs as a Windows service, has no GUI, loads digital files (WMA, FLAC, etc.) onto the memory in your computer and then sends it out of an (asynchronous) USB port, eliminating the need for clock synchronization and associated jitter (so long as there's no up/down sampling).

Audioquest has a nice write up on computer audio

[[DANGERDAN]]

I use Wasapi output which is a bit perfect signal transfer and i send it to my m-dac which i can also use a specific file provided by audiolab to authenticate the transfer is of bit perfect reproduction.
Winamp and XBMC use wasapi so GUI is available and is easy to use.

I also have recently purchased some nice B&W 802D's after traveling the country listening to various speakers and speaker equipment, i have a great deal of experience under my belt now and have been enjoying my ongoing passion with audio technology.