James,
I could not agree more. Equipment components that are truly high-fidelity should be designed and built to handle a broad range of typical issues. They should not need special cables, special power and should work with everything else. It can be done. My Benchmark DAC 3 is pretty solid. I have yet to find any band-aid cables, reclockers etc. that will affect the sound. I am sure there are other DACs out there that are just as solid. However, I wish this was true of all DACs and my experience wasnât that many DACs and components are quite variable in performance - even a different USB cable can have an effect!
I disagree to a certain extent about power. While it is quite possible to build safeguards against some issues with dirty power, many donât. Power conditioning is applied in studios and broadcast facilities so it isnât unreasonable to complete that chain at home. What is unreasonable to me is paying many thousands to do that.
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Nice read I get bashed about this on forums it seems as most sources stink dac makers point to usb as the bad guy. It kills me that someone who uses a laptop posts conclusions that are not based on real facts.
In my setup i use a few methods to better lower the noise on my audio network.
Make a separate network for your audio alone use your router to make a audio alone network that no non audio has the address for
Donât use the router as a switch use your own LPS SW
For audio.
Use a gig speed rated switch.
I use two network isolators one at the network audio switch. The second is located at the dac pc if using usb and at the dac if a network dac