Thinking more about the Stello DA100 and USB audio in general, it struck me that it won't be terribly long before we start seeing big boy manufacturers putting out insanely priced USB DACs. After listening to the Chord CD transport, I did the bad audiophile thing and started wondering just what a $13k Chord USB DAC would sound like...
But don't get me wrong, I do want to see mass-adoption by the industry. I believe advertising USB and iPod audio as legitimate audiophile-approved devices will go a long way towards bringing new blood back our way. What will it take to convince the manufacturers to provide legitimate USB solutions along side their traditional offerings?
The USB DAC market is indeed going to be huge.
Everybody's listening to digital music through earplugs and headphones, so people are primed for a higher quality offering.
Even though the percentage of music fans interested in fidelity will be a single digit, numerically it's a big market opening up.
I don't know about you, but for the rest of my life there will be a computer of some sort running in the corner of my living room.
Storing and indexing music in lossless format is pretty trivial nowadays, and within a couple of years you'll be purchasing lossless encodes from iTunes and so forth.
It's pure convention that a spinning plastic disc in your CD-player is a richer source than the same bits streamed from a hard disk.
The purists won't ever want a noisy, ratty, websurfin' computer galvanically connected to their audiophile systems, but I guess the rest of us can buy a mid-price USB-DAC and with a bit of due diligence make the setup sound really good.
Interesting question. If I were a high end equipment manufacturer looking for a quick buck, that would be an absolute no-brainer. These days, many people's computers and/or iPods constitute the main (and often only) source of music in a given household, specially if by "people" we mean "under 35" (which, in turn, also means "Champagne tastes and a beer budget"). Makers of budget-priced DACs could hit the jackpot here - specially if they can get rave reviews from iLounge.com or other sites catering to the iPod fanatics.
Stereophile just reviewed a budget receiver (The Outlaw RR2150) which features an USB port in the back. iPods and derivated accesories are also popping more often on this kind of magazines. I think it is just a matter of time before hard disk-based audio (uncompressed, of course) gets regarded in equal respect as SACDs or vinyl are today. It would be suicidal for high end to do otherwise.
There are a few high-end USB DACs out there already and more are on their way. Most notable at this point is Wavelength Audio (http://www.wavelengthaudio.com/usbdac.html) who offers 3 levels from $1750 to over $10,000. I have heard the Cosecant and it is an amazing product. The Brick is the most economical and has a Class A rating from Stereophile.
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