Can DAC play 24/96 files via its USB ports ?

Posted by: pz on 22 October 2011

I have some downloaded 24/96 music files on my PC in flac format generally.

I would like to play them via my home stereo. As far as I heard DAC accepts

only files in WAV format by its USB ports. For me it means that I have to convert 24/96

FLAC to 24/96 WAV first. Could anyone recommend a reliable program

to download to do the conversion ? And finally, is dac able to play 24/96 WAVs via

its USB ports without problems ? Thx.

 

 

Best regards,

Posted on: 22 October 2011 by Peter_RN

If you have not yet updated your nDAC with the latest (is it software or firmware) you can download it from the Naim website, this will enable the DAC to play both WAV & flac files via its usb ports. Yes, it can play 24/96 files this way. DbPoweramp on a pc will rip and convert to virtually any format you could wish for.

 

Peter

Posted on: 22 October 2011 by pz

Thx Peter.

 

Can a HDD also be connected via USB to play music ?

 

 

Posted on: 22 October 2011 by Peter_RN

I believe some have done this, although I have never used either of the usb ports on mine; I haven’t updated mine as it does everything I need.

 

I would think that the drive would need to be powered, but wouldn’t the files only play sequentially? I can’t see how you would select individual tracks say.

 

Hopefully someone who has done this will be along to clarify shortly.

 

Peter 

Posted on: 22 October 2011 by Stoik

Reading the index table on a hard drive may take a while on the nDAC... And I think it needs to be partitionned in FAT32 too... Not very practical, considering that a lot of high resolution music files (ex: classical music movements that are going 15-20 minutes in lenght) could be larger than the 4GB maximum file size supported by FAT32... Not to mention that playing thousand of music files with just the forward and reverse keys as controls is now reknown by the human rights association as a form of torture.

 

If you have only a few albums of high resolution music, get the firmware upgrade done on your nDAC and get a few USB flash memory keys.

 

If you plan to grow your high resolution music files collection or want more playback options and control features, consider the addition to the nDAC of one of the many Naim servers and clients or similar 3rd party offerings.  

 

Bye.