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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

A Computer Audio system is not simple like a Victrola

"So the only way to tell if Async USB is working correctly is by listening. Hard to believe, but OK."

Computer audio is complicated. USB based computer audio is even more complex than other forms. If you want a simple system that has predictable behavior, my suggestion is to stick to a Victrola. No complex digital logic, analog circuitry, mixed signal circuitry, power supplies and wiring, electronic clocks, circuit board traces, high frequency data signals, firmware, software, etc...

If you are willing and able to open up a DAC and reverse engineer it, including opening up and reverse engineering all of the chips inside the DAC, then in principal you can determine how a few product samples probably worked before you destroyed them in the process of reverse engineering. Otherwise, all you can do is observe the DACs performance, e.g. by measurements of its output or by listening to it. So far, no one has come up with a set of measurements that will adequately test a DAC as a black box to see if it is correctly implemented. Indeed, since your DAC almost certainly has one or more processors that execute firmware you are working on the problem of determining if software works correctly. Telling if software works correctly is impossible by black box tests. (This is proven by theory and confirmed by decades of practice.)

Sorry, but that's the nature of the beast.



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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