I am looking at purchasing a DAC to use with my main system and my headphone amp. I thought I would get an
iFi iDAC as it is in my price range, the specs looks great and the initial reviews have been very favorable. However, my Denon DVD-1920 has optical and coaxial digital audio outputs, HDMI, S-Video and RCA outputs. Is there any way to use the Denon DVD with a USB DAC that only has a USB input (e.g., SPDIF to USB)? If there is, is it likely to sound worse than just going RCA out from the DVD to my AVR?
I could get the
Emotiva XDA-2 ($350) which has 6 digital inputs (2 coax, 2 Toslink, 1 USB, 1 AES/EBU), but I would be giving up portability and my guess is that the iDAC will sound better. I really do not want to go over $350 and I don’t think the Audioengine D1 ($169, has USB or SPDIF input, but USB is only 24/96) will sound as good as either the Emotiva or iDAC.
TIA!
