Re: Your opinions about Cambridge Audio Dacmagic Plus
Reply #13 –
So to compare the two: Both accept USB-audio input. Both have line-out, the Presonous using 1/4" jacks rather than RCA, no big deal.
Presonus Audiobox: $100. Headphone out. Digital inputs: one USB digital up to 96/24. Other inputs: dual microphone inputs (offering phantom power) and volume mixer.
Cambridge DacMagic: $200. No headphone out. Digital inputs: USB + 2x coax + TOSlink, up to 192/24. Other inputs: none.
If you want headphone out, the DacMagic has none.
If you have digital sources outputting S/PDIF, the Presonus accepts none. The DacMagic supports one more audio format, 192/24 - doesn't that mean you can hook up a Blu-Ray to it? In any case, you cannot connect S/PDIF to the Presonus at all.
Apart from possible 192/24 from a device other than a computer, I wouldn't care for the extra format - from a computer, I would nevertheless have to set up a resampler to handle my odd 22.05/24/32 kHz files. (And the two 352.8 DSDs that I downloaded from 2L out of curiosity to check WavPack's abilities.)
Spending money to audio units; generally I have a thought that "if it's expensive, it's better - good product = good money."
That is true up to about 100-150 US dollars. At that price you can buy something so good that improvement is no longer meaningful. If you try to spend a lot more you either get integrated amplifiers, specialized features for things like low latency audio recording, or you're getting cheated.
Well, for consumer audio, you would expect microphone input with phantom and mixing to be "specialized features" and expect that some of the $100 would be spent on that. So from the $100-150 quote, one could suspect there would be room for improvement. Of course, if one already has the Presonus Audiobox: try to borrow and test, rather than spend $200 for differences that may or may not exist.
BTW, I wonder what would be the retail price of a component with only box, power supply, print card that does nothing, CE sticker and a retailer network which honors returns of defective components. Atop that, DAC chips aren't expensive.
But putting up a production line is. So even if prices aren't "outright fraud" - and Cambridge aren't the worst in the business, and $200 isn't outrageous - mumbo-jumbo garage brands are typically grossly inefficient. It costs them $$$s to produce the first unit of a very few, and you could just instead have just bought some less flashy gear. [Which I guess some of the less honest ones do, and re-box it.]