FREE DAC EXPERIMENT!

[Alex McF]

All,

 

I am currently sending analogue from an AE (fed by my G5 iMac) to my Musical Fidelity X-80 and Castle Severn IIs, all controlled by Remote from my iPhone or iPod Touch, in preference to getting out of my chair and hunting around for CDs to play in my MF X-Ray! The sound is different and I am getting more detail for sure.

Inspired by various posters (JCBrum, Tim F and Ashley et al) I am minded to try a free experiment! I say free as I have an Edirol UA-1Ex to hand from work and a spare Toslink lead... So far so good I hear you say. However, I prize the wireless facility and do not want to commit a laptop to being a music server. How do I power the UA-1EX? I could temporarily set up a laptop with iTunes and use the USB output to feed the UA-1EX but that would be a lot of bother and would not tell me how the AE + external DAC is performing. Or can I set up the laptop and use the optical input? Can I simply use a USB charger (like the one with an iPhone) to power the UA-1EX? Or will this fry the UA-1EX?

 

Any thoughts?

 

Alex