In Reply to: Incorporating the DAC and Streamer in one box posted by Ivan303 on March 29, 2021 at 15:53:32:
The right way to do it is to put the master clock source right next to the DAC chip for lowest possible jitter. The DAC section should pull data from the streamer section. This was one of considerations (besides sound and functionality) that attracted me to the Linn and Lumin streamers.
Unfortunately, not all one box streamer + DAC products are implemented this way. When I looked a couple years ago, many on the market were using an OEM custom single board computer from StreamUnlimited (or similar) for the streaming functionality. These streaming-specific SBCs have S/PDIF outputs, and sometimes I2S, which push data + clock to the DAC section. That requires the DAC section to generate the DAC MCLK source using a PLL. This is a modular approach that makes design easy for a high end audio company that doesn't have a computer engineer on staff, but you'll get inferior jitter performance this way. A two-box solution with asynchronous USB interface will be better.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Incorporating the DAC and Streamer in one box - Dave_K 09:03:52 03/30/21 (0)