Dear all,
The TAS review suggests on page 2 that the BDA-2 sounds much better when it is connected to SPDIF than to USB output. I am using a mac mini -> BDA-2 -> BP26 -> 4BSST2 -> PMC IB2 system. So, I have only two output options: usb or toslink. Do you think that the sound will be better if I switch from USB output to Toslink optical cable? For example, using a Van den Hul Optocoupler II toslink cable.
Thank you.
Zied, from France.
If I were you I wouldn't give that much thought. This is directly opposite to what many, if not most, other people are subjectively experiencing when they go from a standard sound card based S/PDIF connection to a modern good XMOS-based async USB implementation. I would think that the ESI Juli card using S/PDIF actually will give higher jitter measurements than the async USB connection. He seems to me to have a negative bias against USB-based solutions that he fools himself to think he doesn't have, just as he seems biased towards Bryston DACs in general given that he already had BDA-1, and the excessive amount of praise. He uses pretty strong words, indicating huge performance gains from BDA-2 over existing DACs in general, and S/PDIF vs USB, something that makes me not finding this review useful at all. It is simply to subjective and overstated, and absolutely nothing seems to have been done to actually verify this huge quality differences using a little bit less subjective techniques.
I hopefully get my BDA-2 soon, and judging from my previous experience from comparing audio products in this quality range I am pretty sure that the differences will ble only slightly detectable to more or less imagined compared to my BDA-1. At least not a revolution. I am also pretty sure that there will be little to no actualy quality difference between async USB and S/PDIF, both experienced and measured (if this was an option).
EDIT: I actually use the Van den Hul Optocoupler II toslink cable between my computer and the BDA-1 today. I could hear no diffence in my case when I bought it to replace the 4m Mitsubishi Eska POF from Blue Jeans Cable (which is a good quality cable made of plastic, which according to some is unsuited, even though the bandwith is made to be perfectly good enough for the TOSLINK standard. It is in fact a TOSLINK cable
). I originally used a async M2Tech Hiface Two USB-adapter with RCA->BNC coax, but the USB-adapter randomly failed to be detected during boot. It had to be pulled out and inserted into the USB again. I sonically slightly prefered the M2tech async USB (which is XMOS based) but that doesn't really matter when the product itself is unreliable.
