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Showing posts from September, 2014

Totaldac USB cable / filter

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Introduction Totaldac is a company based in France that has been creating a lot of buzz lately with its DAC designs. The founder of Totaldac is Mr. Vincent Brient, a professional engineer who has worked in a variety of industries before founding Totaldac. Looking at the hand built R2R circuit (utilising 0.01 % precision Vishay resistors) inside his DAC, a certain amount of respect is due for Mr. Brient. Description The Totaldac USB cable / filter is stated to improve the sound of any DAC or music server utilising a USB connection. A sealed aluminum box contains more than 30 components, to provide filtering for digital pollution coming from a computer or music server. The box will even protect your DAC from an over voltage situation. The Totaldac USB cable will operate under both USB 1.0 and 2.0 modes, and transmits bit-perfect data. No drivers were needed in my tests, under both Windows and Mac environments. Mr. Brient kindly agreed to answer some questions I had about his cable and so

Astin Trew Concord Powered USB Cable System

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Introduction The Astin Trew Concord Powered USB Cable System (hereinafter referred to as the "Concord USB") consists of a high quality 5V power supply design based on the patented Never Connected circuit (as seen on Trichord Research and Michell Engineering products), and a cable of your choice to split the data and power lines. You can read more about the Never Connected Circuit at http://www.never-connected.com/concept.html Two cable options are offered. The first option is a complete USB cable solution - the source end has two heads - one end plugs into your computer / streaming device, and the other end into the power supply box. The destination plug goes into the USB socket of your DAC. The second option consists of a USB B type plug with a piggy back female socket (to use your USB cable of choice), and a second cable to connect to the power supply. According to Astin Trew, the Concord USB boosts performance to your computer music setup by supplying your DAC (for bus pow