With a traditional internal sound card, the audio bit stream travels across the PCI-E bus and into the sound card’s DAC chip producing an analogue output. USB DACs are essentially external sound cards for a computer. It will be the single largest contributor to your DMP’s sound quality so you should definitely purchase the best one your pocket book can afford. I cannot understate the importance of your DAC. The Marantz NA8005 boasts this capability. If you wish to decode stereo DSD files, a 5.6 MHz DSD compliant DAC would be a great idea. Super Audio CD (SACD) uses the DSD encoding scheme. The consumer electronics industry won’t have to worry about this anytime soon but stopping at 192 KHz seems premature.
Octuple-rate Direct Stream Digital (DSD) recording capabilities are found in some professional gear. Even sampling rates as high as 24.576 MHz are available. Some DACs can process 32bit/384 KHz files. The only downsides are that the Sonos system doesn’t offer any onboard storage, nor is it capable of decoding high resolution formats like FLAC 24 bit/192 KHz.Ģ4 bit/192 KHz audio files may be the highest resolution you’ve come across but believe it or not, it doesn’t stop there. With its very reasonable pricing and first rate industrial design, it’s easy to see why Sonos has become so popular. Sonos offers three different speaker models and even a wireless subwoofer. It also makes it really easy to setup a multi-room system. The Sonos app is a wonderful piece of software. If you have speakers but no amplifier, the Connect:Amp adds an internal amplifier to the mix. The Connect has a built-in volume control so you don’t even need a preamp.
Just connect the analogue outputs to your amplifier and you’re ready to go. If you already have an amplifier and speakers, the Sonos Connect will serve as a wired or wireless receiver and DAC. It makes for a wonderfully clean and efficient setup. These in turn, receive, convert, amplify and play. When you play music with a Sonos system, the app wirelessly streams the content to the speakers. They contain a built-in music streamer, DAC, amplifier and the speaker itself.
Unlike traditional passive units, Sonos speakers are active. It consists of Sonos speakers and a device like a smartphone or a tablet running the Sonos App. However, it doesn’t fall neatly into either product category. The Sonos wired / wireless HiFi system is perhaps the most popular DMP in the world. Perfect examples of this are Naim Audio’s Uniti range of players as well as various products from Cocktail Audio. Some all-in-one DMPs go a step further and even offer built-in amplification. In order to protect your music collection, it should be backed up to a secondary external location such as a USB hard drive, a computer or NAS. It often consists of a single hard drive without any built-in redundancy. The storage typically found in DMPs is less sophisticated than the RAID 5 array found in the NAD M52. Some all-in-one models even have digital inputs so that they may be used as dedicated DACs. The Bluesound Vault fits nicely into this category as it includes the server, 2TBs of internal storage and a digital to analogue converter. These all-in-one units have integrated storage and built-in DACs. Admin T13:03:16+00:00 October 9th, 2015 | Audio, Audio Components, Buyer Guides, Features | Comments Off on Digital Music Player Shopping Guide: Everything You Need To Know To Find a Player Within Your Budget