DAC Upgrade Options

[noddyisking]

Hi All, I'm new to the forum, introduced to it by Mike G who sold me a Little Pinkie PSU to go with the X-Can I picked up on Ebay. Although I have a decent A/V set up with Marantz DV7001, PS3, Sony ES5200, Monitor Audio Radius, I find that I do most of my listening in my "office". The set up here has three sources, an iMac, a Marantz CD63 KI Sig, and a Dunlop Systemdek turntable going into a NAD C340 Amp and playing through Mordaunt-Short 902i's which are wall mounted on either side of the Mac. Because this room is located beside our bedroom and my wife likes to read in peace, I decided to get a headphone rig. So the X-Can is in the post and my wife got me HD650's for Christmas.
Increasingly I am building up music on Apple Lossless files that I don't have on CD and I'm replacing MP3 files on iTunes with AL for the convenience and for portable use. Currently I use an Edirol UA-1Ex as a DAC from USB on the Mac through phono out to the Nad. It is also used as an ADC for vinyl to digital conversion. I think that an upgrade to this DAC will improve the sound quality, especially in the headphone rig. The set up I envisage is Mac to DAC via USB, Marantz CD63 to DAC via Co-Ax or Toslink, DAC to X-Can over phono leads and X-Can back to Nad over phono. So I am looking for a good USB DAC for around €300 or less. What do people think of the set up? Is the DAC upgrade worth it? What DAC's would you recommend?

[mrarroyo]

Does your Mac have optical out? If yes you could get a DAC that accepts both optical and coaxial?

[noddyisking]

Yes it has optical out but everything I have read on various forums is advising that USB out is better than optical out because the optical out has been "processed" through the sound card and the USB is the basic digital file. Do people agree with this?

[noddyisking]

Update: Went for a MHDT Paridisea +. It's hand made in Taiwan and everything I have read about it points to it being the best option. Will update when I have it burned in etc.

[tarkovsky]

The mac optical out isn't bad at all. I have never heard of it being processed, are you referring to the extra jitter toslink endures because of the signal modulation into pulses of light? I have both, a soundcard with spdif and a mac with optical. I haven't actually A to Bed them but in general use I haven't noticed a difference.

[tarkovsky]

Tell you what. I will A to B them. I haven't got an SPDIF cable lieing around atm. I can do it next week if I find one. Would you be interested in the results?

[noddyisking]

Yes, I would be very interested. I might have got my wires and fiber optics crossed!!! Some of the people I spoke to and or corresponded with definitely said that I would get better results from USB, but I am not sure if I made it clear that the option was optical out as opposed to an output from the sound card. Now that I think about it, the optical out from the Mac is obviously a digital output. I guess the question is now whether the USB or the optical out works best with the receiving circuits in the MHDT Paridisea DAC.
Please let me know how you find the optical out with your sound card. When I get the DAC, I will compare the sounds from both interconnects

[mrarroyo]

In most applications the USB is limited to 16 bits and 44.1khz sampling. IMO this is fine w/ regular CD's but others want the up-sampling and over sampling.

[tarkovsky]

Usb 1.1 even can handle 24 bit 96khz it's just dependant on what you buy.

[noddyisking]

Any recommendations for software to use on a mac running leopard to optimise audio quality. Currently upgrading most of my itunes library to apple lossless