Houckster

I think the solution that I've settled on is to upgrade to the DACMagic Plus. It has a number of features that I really would like to have including a headphone output that would make it unnecessary to turn on the rest of the system.

After a lot of searching, I found that the DACMagic only supports up to 48/16 Hz sampling rate for the USB input. As is true for most equipment, one has to read the specs carefully. I found that only the coax and optical inputs support 192/24. I now have the DAC set at 48Hz. If I want the higher level, I'll have to buy the DACMagic Plus. Thanks for your help.

I have a DACMagic taking the USB input from my computer (Windows 7 Pro) and tonight I bought some 96/24 FLAC files (Diana Krall) from HDTracks and played them on Media Center 17 only to find out that the DAC is only detecting a 44.1 sampling rate. I have looked at a number of places and haven't found an answer yet. I checked MC17's DSP Studio settings and files at a 96000 Hz sample rate are set to output at 192,000 Hz. Any ideas why?

Joining this forum has already saved me $2500. The Olive is a true dead end for someone like me. For about $700, I can get a laptop to do the same stuff the Olive can do.

I guess it pays to keep an open mind and I will. That said, I wonder just what differences there are in a $650 cable compared to the Transparent cable for example.

Thanks Vade for your comment. If you are correct and I'm assuming you are since now that I think about it the DAC only cleans up a music datastream, then a good USB cable is required. I had planned to use the USB cable that came with my PS Audio Digital Link III but will look around for a better one. It is a bit strange that PS Audio doesn't offer an upscale USB cable when they offer some of the best power cords and analog interconnects. Think I'll e-mail them and hear what they have to say as well. I still can't think that these ultra high cost USB cables really deliver proportionally greater value but I can see spending, say $100 or so for a better cable. Your comparison with what you have now and the AudioQuest USB cable you're waiting for will be something I'm going to be looking forward to on this topic. Thanks again for your help.

I looked over the Olive O4HD pretty closely and I sent Olive 2 requests for information, neither of which were answered. Furthermore the flexibility of the Olive product seems to be less than is possible with a dedicated computer. When I send a request for information to a company wanting that much money for their product and they refuse to answer or even to acknowledge my request, that tells me they have no interest in me and therefore I have the same amount of interest in purchasing their product.

I am new to this forum and I'm just getting started on this subject so I'm ready to be corrected if necessary. It seems to me that the music file is transmitted as data from the HD to the server and then from the server to the DAC. I further believe that the data only becomes music after it has been processed by the DAC and leaves via the RCA outputs. If there's any benefit to a high end USB cable it would be in delivering data in a more timely and accurate manner than a cheap USB cable. And it shouldn't take $500 to do that.