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RE: An insolent provocation .... if a usb dac is very well design (and built) the pc quality should not matter

Hi,

> What i meant is that if the usb dac is designed and built correctly
> and therefore provides, among other things, full isolation from the
> PC,

Good luck finding one.

Common digital isolators in the Digital Audio section can easily add several nanoseconds of jitter, so they are rare.

Readily available USB Isolator systems remain resolutely stuck at 12MBps, which limits them to 96kHz 2-channel audio (good enough for CD standard Audio but little else).

Another option is to isolate the ULPI Bus if available, this means bidirectional isolation for 8 Bits, Clock, direction and other housekeeping at > 60MBps, also no cakewalk.

So isolated USB is usually rare. As another thread showed, even some gear that should be isolated reads 0 Ohm between USB ground andAudio Ground (read no isolation whatsoever).

> changing the pc source upstream, with any other thing unchanged
> from the usb dac down, should not affect the final sound
> significantly.

Lot's of if's and butt's (more than in a Vegas Strip Joint) here.

Like you must also keep noise from the PC out of the mains, unless your gear is designed to block such noise.

But yes, IN PRINCIPLE, if money was no object, if any agency requirements could be safely met or ignored if they cannot be met and if all parts of the audio systems were designed for sufficient EMI/RFI etc. Resistance, then yes, your contention should hold true.

Just remember that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice...

Thor

At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to intolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?

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