wgcho

Peter, thank you so much for your detailed answer. It's good to know my engineering mind was not too far off. At the same time, it is quite mind boggling how much BS is going on in various forums, reviews and offline shops. I'm actually quite surprised these false information are not being corrected. Someone should perhaps summarize all the truths and myths about digital music, once and for all. Once again, thank you!

Hi everyone, I consider myself quite technical (advanced degree in Computer Science) but as I am relatively new to digital music, I am having these burning questions - which seem quite basic, but hard to find answer for. - I have a Mac Mini connected to Lindeman DAC via USB. I thought, in this way, the music file (AFLAC) is directly passed to the DAC, and therefore as long as the cable is good enough to not cause jitter, the sound quality should NOT depend on the music player I am using. I currently use iTunes, but people say I will get better sound by using something like Amarra. If this is true, that means some sort of signal processing is happening at the software level. Can I set it up so that the raw digital music is sent to the DAC so all the audio processing happens independently of the computer or software? - Similar question, in this case for when I am using an iPod transport. I was reading a review for the Wadia 171 transport in which it says the audio quality was different when connecting an iPod vs. an iPad. The reviewer noted that the difference could be coming from the iPad cable. How is this possible? Does the iPod/iPad transport do more than extracting digital music and sending it over to the DAC? How can a longer cable for digital transport affect the audio quality?? Although these two are different questions, they are actually the same in the sense that I am asking for what happens in the source-to-DAC process. This is probably a very fundamental question, so any pointers to a good reading is also welcome!