audiobomber

The DAC is made to be powered from a USB 2.0 connection, which is present on the USBridge. I don't doubt the Meridian sounds better with a cleaner power supply and re-clocking, but it does not need more power than the USB 2.0 standard 5V, 500mA, to operate within spec.

Yes, and hopefully this will put an end to the raging semantic argument.

CD's 96dB, seems like it should be enough, yet my experience is that, all else being equal, more bits sounds better. DSD resolution is equivalent to 20 bits in PCM, but DSD recording sometimes imposes a softness that I don't like. When first exploring computer audio, I downloaded a test that provided some familiar tunes, reproduced at 16/44, 24/48, 24/96 and 24/192. The biggest difference was between 16/44 and 24/48. Nevertheless, I believe the quality of the recording far outweighs the importance of 16 vs. 24 bits or sample rates beyond 44.1kHz. I believe that oversampling or transcoding to a higher sample rate is beneficial, as it allows for a more gradual aliasing filter. I prefer to do this in exact multiples of the original signal to avoid interpolation. For 16/44, I use 176.4kHz (4X), or 5.6MHz DSD (128X). My Audiolab CD/DAC/preamp performs integer oversampling and upsamples up to 84.672MHz and 32 bits

The USBridge has USB A female port and the Direct DAC has a USB B female port, so you need a USB 2.0 A male to B male cable. I can't see any compatibility issue.

"Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. (November 20, 1941 – June 6, 2019), better known by his stage name Dr. John, was an American singer and songwriter. His music combined blues, pop, jazz, boogie-woogie and rock and roll." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._John

Try blocking the 5V feed from your USB cable. My (self-powered) DAC benefitted significantly from this little tweak.

I heard this at the end of a Netflix show (can't remember which), and chased it up.

Good to know, and great price. My preamp has RCA and XLR outputs. The original plan was to connect my power amp via RCA, and connect my headphone amp via XLR-to-RCA, as neither amp had balanced inputs. Shortly after I started this thread, I saw a great sale price on another headphone amp with balanced inputs, and bought one along with a balanced cable. So I no longer need XLR to RCA connection, but at least I know what went wrong should I have a need in the future. I have had no previous experience with balanced cables, I definitely learned something here. My thanks to everyone who participated.

They didn't say so, but I believe that grounding pin #3 is a problem for their design, and no way to avoid that with an XLR/RCA adapter.

Audiolab's advice is to split the unbalanced output with an RCA splitter in lieu of dual outputs.

Not interested in your inane chatter. Take it to PM.

I found this description of the Hosa GFX 132 adapter online: Designed to adapt a phono plug to an XLR input. XLR pin 3 is grounded resulting in an unbalanced signal XLR pin #2 connects with the center RCA contact (signal) XLR pins #1 and #3 are joined and connected to the RCA sleeve (ground) I provided the above to Audiolab and asked about compatibility. At this point it's academic, because I received the Hafler HA15 headphone amp, which I'm using with Yorkville DLX XLR cables. My speaker amps are connected to the Audiolab RCA outs. Everything is working great.

Not true, the ESL 57 predated the Quad 303 by 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_Electroacoustics#Audio_products