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In Reply to: RE: How good can a cheap $200 Chinese DAC actually be? posted by bare on April 30, 2017 at 13:12:21
The Pi/HiFi Berry Digi+ Pro S/PDIF output is the near equal to the USB output from my headless Mac Mini. Not quite, but close. With a top class DAC.
Pi vs. MacBook Air is closer, even with decent CD rips. I could live with ether in my livingroom headphone setup.
That's using either Audio-GD multi-bit ladder DAC, Master-7 with 8 PCM1704U-K, Master-11 with but 4 (plus a balanced headphone amp).
Likely not up to uRendu standards, but, according to those who have done the comparison, maybe a step up from the Squeezebox touch?
With a top-of-the-line DAC, of course. :-)
Follow Ups:
There is truth in what bare says. Perhaps yours and other MAC users share the same computer output issues.
In my experience, the spdifs from Pis and cheap others are not well designed or engineered and if these are better than your usb, then there is probably an issue with the output.
Nor did I say that the S/PDIF of the Pi (HiFi Berry makes three different models of which I have two) bettered the USB output of either of my Macs.
What I did say is that the better of the HiFiBerry S/PDIF outputs of the Pi is very close in sound quality to the MacBook Air and near to the Mac Mini. Surprisingly so.
That would be quite a bit different from 'better'.
As far as your 'experience' in 'design or engineering', let's just say we've all had the opportunity to read your posts here for some time and so we can come to our own conclusions! ;-)
bare is right about your $50 output almost equalling your MAC's usb connection.
This means to us that your MAC output is not very good.
HiFi Berry or whatever, they are low end dacs.
Again, you have no idea what you are talking about.
The HiFi Berry boards are I2Ss to S/PDIF converters, not DACs. I don't have a HiFi Berry DAC.
And yes the better of the three is pretty good. As good as my Mac Mini USB output to the same Audio-GD DAC? No, but surprisingly good. MUCH better that the stock SONOS Connect playing the same ripped CD. And good enough to benefit from pairing with a good PCM1702U-K Multi-bit Ladder DAC. :-)
How good does my Mac Mini?
How would you know?
Deduction from your, and others' posts here and elsewhere.
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