If hooked up to an external DAC and all it does is transporting 1s and 0s digitally, how can that affect Soundstage, how punchy the bass is, etc?
If hooked up to an external DAC and all it does is transporting 1s and 0s digitally, how can that affect Soundstage, how punchy the bass is, etc?
There is no difference, except in how you hook your streamer to your DAC. Read up, but optical and coaxial can cause slight issues with timing. Whereas usb leaves the DAC to control that, so you would always get the same result.
So the sound depends more on the quality of your DAC for usb, but for optical and coaxial the ‘quality’ of the streamer can have a little impact on the output. But only a little.
The quality of your source (lossless etc.) and the mix of your source (well produced or not?) makes way way more difference.