jeff360

not really .... i'm looking for a DAC that costs about $500, and the micro is a product that i keep reading positive comments about. however, as i mentioned, most of my music will still be in PCM format, so i was wondering if a similarly priced product would do a much better job on PCM conversion? thanks for the "warm welcome" to the forum though ...

I'm a newbie to computer audio, but have been reading the forums for a little while as I've been thinking about putting together a system. Regarding a DAC, I'm looking for something in the $500 range. I will have a number of files in DSD format, so I've been looking at DSD capable DAC's -- however the large majority of my files will still be PCM based. The iFi micro is right in my price range, and has received excellent reviews on this forum. I'm sure it will do an excellent job on my DSD material, but will the PCM suffer in comparison to other DAC's in the $500 price range? Also, I've seen some mention of the need for "upsampling" to take full advantage of the iFi micro. As a newbie, I'm wondering if I can just plug it into my mac mini and have it sound as great as the posts on this forum suggest -- or are tweeks like upsampling needed? Thanks, looking forward to getting started with computer audio!