I'm having a little bit of trouble squaring away different schools of thought regarding connecting devices.
Disregarding higher hi-res audio and potential benefits it brings, and sticking strictly to 96/24 or lower for discussion:
Why would network cables to streamers and then USB to DAC, both of which carry electrical current from (often poorly designed) switching power based components be /better/ than wifi + optical?
If my home mesh network is strong and there's no data loss or interference for such a comparatively low stream of data compared to other uses, and then said device is connected via optical to DAC, thus just light based, is this not potentially the "cleanest" signal I can get here?
For example:
- a tiny 5v/1amp chromecast audio over wifi, then optical to dac
- the same device via the network adapter plug with internal network interface and network cable through to average switching gear, then optical to dac
- a larger streaming device with more electrical things going on through network cable to same network, then usb to dac
My "gut" tells me that less wires carrying electrical current and nuances the cleaner the signal in to the dac will be, this is why people use fibre optical cables and high grade switches isn't it, and devices to clean up signals over usb wires, to get rid of that, why would I introduce it?
Can anybody shed any further light here?
Disregarding higher hi-res audio and potential benefits it brings, and sticking strictly to 96/24 or lower for discussion:
Why would network cables to streamers and then USB to DAC, both of which carry electrical current from (often poorly designed) switching power based components be /better/ than wifi + optical?
If my home mesh network is strong and there's no data loss or interference for such a comparatively low stream of data compared to other uses, and then said device is connected via optical to DAC, thus just light based, is this not potentially the "cleanest" signal I can get here?
For example:
- a tiny 5v/1amp chromecast audio over wifi, then optical to dac
- the same device via the network adapter plug with internal network interface and network cable through to average switching gear, then optical to dac
- a larger streaming device with more electrical things going on through network cable to same network, then usb to dac
My "gut" tells me that less wires carrying electrical current and nuances the cleaner the signal in to the dac will be, this is why people use fibre optical cables and high grade switches isn't it, and devices to clean up signals over usb wires, to get rid of that, why would I introduce it?
Can anybody shed any further light here?