Naim DAC & Sample Rates

Posted by: Wazza69 on 23 September 2009

Hi all,

So the Naim DAC is specd up to 768kHz / 32bit which is incredible but only via USB. The normal optical input is 192kHz, 24 bit. I thought USB was compromised as a method for carrying digital audio data compared to optical?

I must admit I don’t know much about this. Is there any files/players out there over 192/24?

Thanks

Posted on: 23 September 2009 by David Dever

DxD files (used to edit DSD recordings within a digital audio workstation, such as Pyramix) can be 384kHz/32-bit and transcoded to (PCM) WAV.

Posted on: 23 September 2009 by Eloise

quote:
Originally posted by Wazza69:
Hi all,

So the Naim DAC is specd up to 768kHz / 32bit which is incredible but only via USB. The normal optical input is 192kHz, 24 bit. I thought USB was compromised as a method for carrying digital audio data compared to optical?

I must admit I don’t know much about this. Is there any files/players out there over 192/24?

Thanks

There are two different methods of using a USB port here ...

Using a USB connection to transfer digital data in REAL TIME from (for example) a computer to a DAC is compromised (according to many but not universally accepted) compared with SPDIF via Co-ax or Optical. The Naim DAC can't use USB in this way.

The way the Naim DAC can access 32bit / 768kHz files is using the USB port to connect to a data storage device. This is the same as transferring from a HDD to the memory in a computer.

Eloise