Bel Canto USB Link 24/96 USB-S/PDIF converter By John Atkinson • May, 2009
Sound quality
As a format converter, Bel Canto's USB Link 24/96 shouldn't have a sound of its own, of course; it should be a neutral intermediary. I mainly used Bel Canto's own e.One DAC3 for my auditioning, as that would seem a natural match. As you can read in my November 2007 review, the DAC3 also has a USB data input. Why, then, should a DAC3 owner consider a USB Link 24/96? Because the DAC3 is limited to 16-bit files sampled at 44.1kHz. The Link allows a DAC3 to handle computer-sourced hi-rez files, and I found it did so with ease, other than occasionally emitting three or four clicks when I switched sample rates on the Mac.
I couldn't hear much difference in sound quality between feeding the DAC3 USB data sourced from iTunes on the Mac as it played an AIF or WAV file, and feeding it AES/EBU data from the original CD as played by my Ayre C-5xe universal player. Perhaps the Ayre produced a slightly more solid-feeling bass, with slightly better-defined, better-extended low frequencies, but it was not a night-or-day difference. Changing from the DAC3 to my early sample of the Benchmark DAC1, even that difference between the two sources disappeared, though I slightly preferred the sound of the two Bel Canto devices overall to that of the USB Link 24/96 or Ayre driving the Benchmark, which had a slightly less silky high end. My own 24-bit/88.2kHz files, such as the hi-rez masters for Cantus's While You Are Alive (CD, Cantus CTS-1208) and Attention Screen's Live at Merkin Hall (CD, Stereophile STPH018-2), sounded convincingly better than the "Red Book" CD versions, with my Mac mini feeding the combination of Bel Canto's USB Link and DAC3.
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