As a fellow Mac user with a high quality outboard DAC (Dodson) to feed with S/PDIF data, I have read your recent posts with interest. I visited Steve of Empirical at CES and liked what I heard (with music that I know well) with his heavily modified/repackaged Transit converter. I did not have a chance to ask him about it with the Mac, though his and your comments about M-Audio's required OSX drivers do discourage me from getting his product for my Mac use.
I happen to have an M-Audio Audiophile USB now (given to me; same TI USB chip as the Transit but has external wall-wart), but its just being used with my G4 tower and Dodson on my desktop with some old Kef Q15s and my lovely vintage Marantz 19. So I really can not hear the driver shortcoming yet. But I'm gearing up to set up my big system in a month or so.
What I am now looking into are the alternative USB>S/PDIF converters--ones that can use Mac OS X Core Audio without additional drivers needed--a couple of which you mentioned, and a couple that I have spotted.
So here are my Qs for you:
1) Why did you suggest the Edirol UA-25 and not the UA-5? The UA-25 does not have coax S/PDIF output (only optical) and is USB powered, whereas the UA5 has coax S/PDIF and a wall-wart supply (Oade Bros. even offer a battery power mod for it).
2) Did you actually have a UA-25 in your system? Do you know which USB chip it uses? Edirol's cheaper UA-1D and UA-1X both use a TI 290x series chip which always resamples to 48khz--not good.
3) The $150 ESI/Ego Waveterminal you said good things about is appealing for the price, uses OS X Core Audio, and might be the sort of thing I could persuade Steve to mod with a power supply, tuned output interface, etc. (ala what he does for the Transit). Do you still have yours? Could you pop it open and tell me what USB chip it uses? It might be a Cirrus/Crystal, but maybe it is a TI such as the 1020 or 3200.
By the way, do you know of any good-sounding software upsamplers for the Mac? Preferably one that is integrated into an iTunes-like player. Wishful thinking I know. EAC and Foobar don't seem to be headed towards the Mac anytime soon, and Apple seems asleep regarding audiophile concerns (iTunes won't play a 24/96 file at all).
Thanks and regards,
Alex
