obt_man

May I ask you where did you buy the PPAstudio USB card? Google search sends me to their webpage without any purchase possibility.

I am using Win 7/CAPS 2/J River setup, and I play lot of internet radio thru it. If I just want to play a single station, I add it as playlist to J River and play it from there. I can also control playback of it via JRemote/Ipad. This approach doesn't work if I want to use Spotify or Last.fm, so I just use Chrome Remote Desktop (or Splashtop on my Ipad) to remotely access my CAPS server, open web browser and start playback. It doesn't go thru J River, so I may be losing some sound quality, but considering all the internet radios/streaming services use compressed formats I am not suffering about it too much. Finally I sometimes stream whatever I have on Ipad/Ipod (including radio) wirelessly to my Windows server by using a small app Shairport4w. It acts as Airport receiver on my PC. Works very stable, but the sound quality is the worst given wireless streaming.

Before going furious over Chris, this site and everything else around, my suggestion would be to try J River instead of Foobar in order to see if the issue still exists. I like Foobar, but found it to be a more 'difficult' interface for various external equipment. Get trial version of JRMC 18, test it and then report back. This, along with the suggestion on the Berkeley driver install and all the other recommendations above should solve your matter.

I am not a lawyer and may not know all the legal peculiarities of such situations, but when yesterday I first read the original post I knew 100% it would be deleted. I also knew that many forum members will defend this decision for whatever reason. I anyway very much appreciate that HTGL posted it and shared experience. Since the only explanation for censorship was the legal matter I suggest HTGL to repost his original message, but removing any mentioning of potential lawsuits, just to state factual experience. In this case I believe there will be no legal consequences for CA.

While this may not be the right venue for posting this, but I feel that the HTGL has full right to seek publicity in his particular case. We do not know whether he is right or wrong in his posting, but with the censorship and lack of any response from Paul Hines I am inclined to believe in the described situation and it is shame that nowadays businesses can act like that. If it is true I am certain that such a business is not going to last long, and I am certainly not the one who will be ordering any of Paul Hynes products. Forums like that hold great value when not only people can exchange positive experiences, but also negative once.

Just downloaded. Ok, do not like it too much, but maybe I just need to listen to it carefully. I like Monk, it is one of my favorites, so no problem of having it in my collection. It indeed sounds a bit 'aged', slightly veiled, but at the same time quite smooth. I used to own many poorly mastered jazz CDs with music of the same age, and this one sounds much better

Jesus, thanks for putting this together, very useful. One question as I am very much behind this whole DSD technology. What does the 'DoP Input" and "Native DSD Input" means?

I guess just get one of these WD Elements external drives, like this WD Elements SE 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive WDBPCK0010BBK-NESN - Newegg.com. These are reliable, fast, quiet, USB 3.0. I have 5 of those at home for various purposes and has always been happy with them. In any case whatever drive you choose do not forget about your back-up strategy, this is certainly a critical aspect

I am still not clear whether the SOTM card provides any benefit to USB DACs that do not use power from the PC's USB bus. Audiolab M-DAC doesn't use power from USB, so in this case what are the reasons for using the SOTM card, if any? If someone can clarify this, I would highly appreciate this.

Thorens is a very good classic TT, and I used to own one some time ago. I then moved over to a better TT, however I noticed that any improvements I made to the analogue side of my setup could hardly catch up with my digital one. So I ended up upgrading TT, cartridge, phono preamp just to realize that I need to invest quite a bit more more for the TT to sound better than PC+DAC. I have no doubt that vinyl is a great audio source, but to really enjoy it and for TT to beat the SQ of a good digital/computer based setup one need to put some serious money.

Does anyone know if iUSB is still worth using if DAC doesn't draw 5v power from the USB port? The DAC I own does not use any PC power for its USB receiver, so I am not very confident that I will use iUSB to its full potential. Please advise.

If you happy with your current Benchmark, then I would suggest getting the 2 HGC. This is the DAC on my short list and I am sure you won't be dissapointed. Further, if you willing to allocate budget for Berkley DAC, then my suggestion is to also consider Resonessence Invicta. I think this one is really a brilliant DAC worth your consideration.

Good stuff! I think this is indeed what many brand manufacturers really do

I support the approach of simplifying hi-fi setups as much as possible, so I'd rather suggest going for Peachtree NovaPre into the Quad 606. NovaPre is a very nice piece of equipment for its price and has good features that will be useful in case of desire for future expansion of the system.

For me Naim's hard disc players, like Uniserve, are way too expensive for what they do, however I have no doubt they are excellent products. I think that going for SuperUniti is a much better cost/benefit option. You get great amp at a level of Supernaim with good DAC, and all the streaming and USB drive playback capabilities. As for DAC V1, I have not listened to it yet, but I am pretty sure it will be a very nice product, which should surpass DAC capabilities of Supernait. I considered Supernait several years ago when I had Naim system and it didn't really impress me as DAC, but was awesome as an amplifier.