This month's copy of Stereophile had a couple of articles near and dear to my heart. An article on the Headroom Desktop Max and the Grace Design m902. Both include:
- USB, Toslink and coax digital inputs
- Analog outputs
- Headphone amp
One thing that struck me was that for $1,695 for the Grace Design m902, I would expect a piece of pro gear to be pretty much immune to ground loops. What were they thinking?
Next thing I've been wondering is about jitter. Why is there any jitter anymore? I mean, seriously. It would be easy enough to buffer 10 seconds of data and ensure that you feed the DAC a rock solid data stream.
Lastly, I thought that USB was sopposed to be low jitter because of the bi-directional data stream allowing a player to control the rate of data from the PC, which meant the DAC could act like the master clock. But both of these aparently reasonably well made DAC's have worst jitter performance with USB. Your better off using Toslink. And the m902 had an order of magnitude worse jitter performance.
It looks like my best option is still the Benchmark DAC. I only sigh because I was hoping I could go direct via USB. I don't think it will kill me to have to use a USB->toslink adapter, and having an optical connection may not be ideal jitter wise, but it sure is noise wise. Sorry for rambling,
Erik
Next, the reviewers should hav recommended
