DACs like my own Bushmaster MKII have already reached that level of error reproduction on analogue tracks that were digitized. But I started experimenting with some of the low noise DAC chips like the 8740 etc, only to be confronted by the level of recording noise these low noise DAC chips can pick up. It distracts from the music if you have a detailed system and like to play music very loud. The noise at the beginning of many tracks is just too much in many cases for me.

I hear tape noise on all manner of records and CDs. I don't find it distracts and would never sacrifice resolution for lower noise. Stan - have you tried deliberately adding digital dither in the decode chain to cover up low level digital nasties? Just wondered if it would help.

I was referring to the BMII actually. I set the BM up to dig deep and aggressive in order to help to liven up the mainly less expensive systems that produce an otherwise flat and lifeless performance. The CaimanII is set up differently, with a focus on already excellent systems that can take advantage of the additional digital information that goes towards making a better sounding analogue reproduction.
But my current research is taking me a bit further afield and away from my previous fixation on the DAC chip and its performance. Now that I have had my eye operations I am far less restricted in what my eyes can resolve on the visual display of my scope.  And I am quickly coming to the conclusion that the really important area that has so often been overlooked by designers is the input receiver section of a DAC circuit. I designed and built two identical DACs, except for the fact that the input receivers are different. This is purely for testing purposes so that I can compare signals and noise between the two. I am in the early stages of experimenting, but I am already finding out a few things. One of them is that W8 is less noisy than W7, partly because of the running services. The more services are running, the more noise that is produced by the PC power supply, which then gets passed on to a DAC connected to the PC. I suppose we all could have guessed this already, but it was nice to see confirmation of this on a scope display.

Depends on how far you to go server 2012 r2 can be configured to run on very little services which is far superior to w8 if you have time and patience to pair it down to ultra Skelton mode

Again if you are using that PC to download your music and run other things the services will be higher

Personal unit runs between 18 and 22 services depending on which software player us running, power consumption is now very close to 15 watts when actually playing music the cores run at a maximum of 58C on a hot day


OS have stripped back all of the Microsoft OS's except the new one lol I still personally prefer W7 over the others despite R2 being able to really cut the through the bulk of the traditional windows shell framework

Possible the software I use works more effectively with W7 at the moment this may change in the not to distant future

The big bonus for this method is not using USB which is inherently noise especially when running USB 3 and having a restricted latency so you can bypass this method whilst also using more traditional methods of PCM data transfer therefore avoiding the issues of asynchronous data transfer coupled to giving a 5Vdc feed sat next to the audio data 

All good fun though lol

W10 for Raspberry Pi 2 - from the horse's mouth.

That's been the case for some years now, Tim. £1000 or more for a Macbook should require a lot of justification but when I ask our students why they have one I just get the usual "because they're better", in other words they have no answer except their friends have one so they must have one too.

In all productivity parameters they fall way short of Windows and I've nearly always gone against crowd mentality so I will continue preferring my W8.1/W10 devices!

I usually respond with "The Sun is the UK's most popular newspaper, so it must be the best, right?"

It is rare I like anything that is popular!