EDITED POST
Can some of you gentlemen enlighten me as to whether the following individual points make a difference when transferring digital bits through a streamer to a DAC?
- various types of psus and how they are isolated from the streamer and DAC?
- the quality of the usb/coax/spdif/IS2 implementations?
- USB: does it matter whether power is separated from the signal during transfer?
- USB: usb bus powered vs externally powered implementations
I will leave cables out of it.
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Archimago seems to answer it for me:
"Bitperfect playback from a
reasonable quality computer, using an asynchronous interface, and through a reputable DAC would result in the same sonic output irrespective of claims I've heard otherwise. I have found no need for special
power supplies, fancy cables, or specialty devices for example to clean up the
USB signal. In my mind "reasonable" just means a device that's known to be reliable and has a good reputation, rather than something that needs be endorsed by an audiophile guru. This is the most logical position to take intellectually given how digital devices work, based on objective results I've found, and subjectively I have no cause to
testify otherwise. To put it bluntly...
Yes, "bits are bits" using modern digital computer playback hooked up to a good asynchronous DAC!"