Might give like 1 SINAD more than plain USB, in general there's a slight improvement, although sometimes more significant.I've seen some setups utilizing a digital to digital converter then connecting to a DAC. Is there any particular reason (besides DAC not accepting USB) to do such a setup?
I've seen some setups utilizing a digital to digital converter then connecting to a DAC. Is there any particular reason (besides DAC not accepting USB) to do such a setup?
Might give like 1 SINAD more than plain USB, in general there's a slight improvement, although sometimes more significant.
I'm just going by the measurements so far when amir tested both USB and coax as with the EL Dac, Khadas tone board, ..What the technical reason an external USB-SPDIF converter would have better performance than built in USB?
In general it doesn't hurt to isolate into s/pdif, and often has a small improvement in measurements. Likely it'll sound the exact same as Usb so I agree one shouldn't bother, but generally there really was a small improvement looking at amir's work...Just saying "it may add 1 SINAD" doesn't make any sense. Why do people assume the USB interface on a dedicated spdif converter is always better than the USB interface on any given DAC? The people selling the device may want you to believe that, but there is no reason it must be true. If some vendor is selling both dacs and spdif converters, probably they use the exact same usb implementation in both (unless they one product is very old and the other very new).
Some usb interfaces are better and some are worse. The USB interface on a given DAC may well be much better than the one on a dedicated spdif converter, in which case you just degraded your signal.
You aren't avoiding the "overhead" of usb in either case. You're just moving it from your DAC to a dedicated device earlier in the chain. Digital audio over usb is still there. The only way to remove usb is to not have a usb connection at all in the chain, i.e. dedicated spdif outs on your source.