High End Cable
www.highendcable.co.uk
For best prices telephone Dave Jackson on 01775 761880
Free UK P&P

Acoustic Systems
Analysis Plus
Argento Audio
Artisan Silver Cables
Audience
Chord Company
Ecosse
Furutech
Nordost Corporation
MIT Industries
Purist Audio Design
Quantum QRT
StereoLab
Townshend Audio
van den Hul
Vovox
Wyrewizard

Power Conditioning
Audience adeptResponse
Isotek
Kemp Elektroniks
Quantum QRT
QBase
CableSpike
Cable Tower
Telos
Enhancement CDs
Room Tuning Resonators

Ayra Speakers
Bel Canto Packages
STAX headphones
Asten Trew
Townshend Audio

XLR cables
Sub woofer cables
Chord ipod cables
iPod cables
DIN cables
Mains & Power cables
Jumpers
Firewire

Cables for dCS systems
Chord cables for Naim

HDMI
Digital cables
Optical cables
S video
Component cables

Moving Coil Cartridges
Lyra - Ortofon - Sumiko

Subscribe today to

Ref 1000 Mk 2
Ref1000
Ref500
S500
S300

Pre3
DAC3
Phono3

S300i



PL-1A Player
CD2

USB Link 24/96

Reviews

All models
user guides

Bel Canto Packages

USB Link 24/96

Bel Canto USB Link 24/96
only £395.00

The USB Link 24/96 is a small box, about the size and weight of a pack of cigarettes, with a USB Type B jack at one end and a 75 ohm BNC jack at the other. The user hooks the Bel Canto's USB input up to a USB port on his PC or Mac computer, which supplies power to the Link, thus illuminating a red LED next to the Link's BNC jack. He then uses a 9" length (footnote 1) of Stereovox XV2 S/PDIF datalink (supplied) to feed his audiophile DAC. (This cable is fitted with BNC connectors at both ends; an RCA adapter is provided.) No driver programs are required—the Link uses the native drivers provided with the Mac OSX and Windows operating systems. The computer automatically recognizes the Link as "Bel Canto 2496 USB," and once the Link has been selected as the default audio output device, programs such as iTunes will direct their output to it, and thence to the owner's high-end system.

The Bel Canto USB Link 24/96 disables the computer's volume control, ensuring that the maximum sound quality is obtained from music files. The sample rates supported run up to 96kHz, with a depth of 24 bits.

Under the hood
The USB Link 24/96 is housed in a small aluminum extrusion with black plastic endcaps. Undoing the four Phillips-head screws at each end allows the multilayer circuit board to be slid out. All the components used are surface-mount types. The USB data are fed to a Texas Instruments TAS1020 chip, which converts the audio data to i2C format. The TAS1020 is clocked by an adjacent 6MHz crystal oscillator; despite its thumbnail size, this complex TI chip includes an embedded microprocessor that runs, I believe, code developed by Centrance, obviating the need for the host computer to run a proprietary driver program with the USB Link. The i2C audio data are then fed to a Crystal CS8406 chip, which converts them to the S/PDIF serial format and drives a small pulse transformer adjacent to the output BNC jack, in order to galvanically isolate the computer and audio system and thus avoid injecting high-frequency noise via the linked grounds.

Review

Sources



PL-1A Player
CD, DVD,DVD-A MP3 & SCAD
CD2