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In Reply to: Re: SPDIF card for a laptop posted by Dawnrazor on September 27, 2006 at 21:38:05:
If you wanted to use a laptop and an external HD as a source for your Dac, would you go with this product or the Haggerman HagUSB and why?
Follow Ups:
I am not a fan of either: Creative or USB.I think you make a good point about the resolution. If you are in the upsampling is better camp, then the creative looks like it supports that, and I don't think the Hag does, but am not 100%.
But if you don't care about upsampling and won't be able to sleep thinking about all that corrupt computer power affecting the sound, then get the Hag because it is self powered.
Maybe you could do the audiophile thing and try them both, and let us know which works better?
It doesn't make sense to me that the SPDIF signal is updsampled. Are you sure? More worrisome, is that the output plug on the creatiev says "optical". I need to read a review.
All I am saying is that if your DAC supports higher resolutions and that is what you want to have happen, you may not get that from the HAG. I don't know for sure, but usually if a product is 24/96, than it will say so proudly.If you don't plan to up sample or your dac doesn't support it, then it is not a big deal.
Lately there has kind of been a reversal on the optical thing. THere are many here who are using it over coax since it has galvanic isolation that coax doesn't.
ALong those lines, the Dac that I am using for headphone listening has 2 optical ins and only one rca.
THe designer talked at length about how current toslink signals were better, and that is why 2 were supplied.
Here is a review of the dac in which the reviewer at 6 moons says:
Frankly, already based on this one solitary, repeatable, open-to-all and certainly inconclusive experiment, I feel compelled to pronounce that those folks who categorically dismiss Toslink as an inferior and flawed medium (based on the optical converter, reputed bandwidth limitations, the actual terminals and then the cable interface) are talking out of their arse.
Yes, it's very possible that inferior Toslink terminals or their peculiar mounting to the boards of components could handicap or limit their ultimate performance potential. It's equally possible and rather likely in fact that a run-of-the-mill plastic-fiber Toslink would sound starkly inferior. It's also possible that with a different converter and different cables, one or the other interface would have emerged victorious rather than end in a tie.
But to come to any kind of blanket conclusion (impossible and dangerous anyway) wasn't the point of today's mini experiment. All I'm saying thus far is that results with Toslink can be the spittin' mirror-image equal of the supposedly much superior S/PDIF format. And simply considering the odds, did I, by some strange circumstance of fate, stumble upon the one and only case where Toslink would acquit itself this honorably? No, that isn't likely at all.
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