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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: RE: We'll be making an Ethernet DAC later next year. posted by Charles Hansen on November 3, 2008 at 09:36:27:
I'm encouraged to read your intelligent posts in this thread.
Some comments about an Ethernet DAC as you call it:
- I've been following the SlimDevices product line for some time. I think the squeezebox H/W is a good idea. The Duet controller is a huge improvement over the 2 line remote w/o display that came with the Squeezebox 3. The SqueezeCenter or whatever they call it now is a huge mistake. Their server has a very sub-par interface and poor support for a wider variety of tags or for different ways to view and select music. They locked out everyone who wants to use the player s/w they like. The open source development model turned decisions over to early adopter geeks when they needed to make the s/w better adapted to a broader, less technical set of customers. SlimDevices/Logitech has pulled the decisions and control back into their company but they haven't fixed the problem.
- You should provide a device driver that looks like another audio output device and forwards the audio output stream over an Ethernet connection to your DAC.
- Wireless is still a source of problems for the customer and the manufacturer. Recognize the advantages and problems of wireless and not and be prepared to provide good customer support.
- An Ethernet DAC is not inherently suited to multi-room or home theater audio-video synchronization. You need to decide whether tight synchronization will be supported or not. If it is, you need to give a smooth, positive customer experience.
- Audiophiles are beginning to yammer about high bit rates being essential for any DAC solution. If you charge a lot of money for for your Ethernet DAC, you'd better have a high ceiling for the sample rate.
- It may make sense for you to start with a really expensive high-end device. However, I think the action will be at much lower price points than your high-end line. I'm certainly not a customer for a $ 5000 plus product.
- Long term, your company and the high-end industry will be much better off if you produce a standard protocol for communicating from the device driver in the computer to the Ethernet DAC. Then you want to work with Microsoft and Apple to get a high-quality, bulletproof driver into the standard Windows and OSX OS distributions. Much of the attraction of USB DACs has been the fact that no driver installation is required.
- You might also consider making an ASIO interface part of the driver package. Bypassing the Microsoft audio stack can be a simple way to get good, consistent results for audio output.
I've been an audiophile for about 40 years. I spent over 2 decades implementing real-time kernels, device drivers and kernel level s/w. Much of the current PC audio scene is a complete waste: charlatans fleecing know-nothings. I'm encouraged that you recognize the potential of an Ethernet DAC and I hope you will pursue the project.
Bill
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Follow Ups
- RE: We'll be making an Ethernet DAC later next year. - Old Listener 12:04:51 11/03/08 (2)
- RE: We'll be making an Ethernet DAC later next year. - audioengr 22:53:27 11/07/08 (0)
- RE: We'll be making an Ethernet DAC later next year. - Charles Hansen 17:12:54 11/03/08 (0)
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