In Reply to: RE: PC + Asynchronous USB DAC Question posted by needtubes on December 30, 2011 at 07:54:49:
Well, the Music Streamer II line of Asynchronous USB DACs use an internal power supply that creates its own regulated power that only depends on the USB line as a raw power source. So, since the quality of the USB power does not matter to it, and the clock timing of the provided audio stream does not matter to it, then that means that a lot of the mods in the CMP hardware are not needed, and any properly made USB cable will work as well as the expensive ones (that are otherwise needed for adaptive USB DACs).
Unfortunately, the CMP project has not tagged each hardware and software mod with "this will help with jitter" and "this will help irregardless of jitter", so it is hard to say how much is unnecessary with an asynchronous USB DAC and how much still helps.
Previously I had found MusicBee player to have the best sound quality with my asynch USB DAC simply because it allows the user to specify a low buffer size (unlike foobar2000 and xmPlay which do not). But then I compared MusicBee and cPlay and found that cPlay does have somewhat better quality yet.
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Follow Ups
- RE: PC + Asynchronous USB DAC Question - Ken Stuart 11:53:55 12/31/11 (0)