We discussed the USB output at length and decided against it for a couple of reasons, chief among them is that USB will always be worse than coax or I2S. Second, we know of no reasonable DACs that don’t have at least coax (RCA) as an input. Third, USB is a two way communication protocol which makes our main goal of galvanic isolation nearly impossible to achieve. In the end, we opted for sound quality over convention.
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Thanks for the detailed explanation, Paul.
I figured this was a (very) conscious decision.
Good luck with completing the design/fabrication/roll out.
Cheers.
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Except that most of those other reasonable dacs sound better with usb vs rca, per their own recommendations, so there’s that
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I concur with Vince and dvorak and no doubt many others who run thru USB now and can’t wait to a/b favorites to the AirLens I2s, the digital world is going to light up here
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It’s going to be a race to see who orders it first!
Paul, I have a general question understanding galvanic isolation:
does it mean, no matter what polluted the signal beforehand is completely eliminated or locked out? So measures to reduce noise beforehand are not necessary anymore (linear psu‘s for routers, audiophile switches etc.)? Or did such noise alter the signal already and just additional noise is blocked?
I think it’s a break in the wire inputs across an air gap via light conversion and then back to wire.
Not sure but I think it has been explained that way before.
I think it’s smart to leave USB out of the product.
Most of us have achieved some pretty incredible sound via USB and software but I think it’s time to move on from the connection.
Schiit, on the other hand, is betting big on USB. I read their new CD transport is USB out.
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Hi Paul and team,
any wireless support with Airlens, or strictly hard wired Ethernet??
Wireless is needed when you dont have Ethernet cabling nearby, and may also provide some ethernet galvanic isolation (!! just wanted to say that)
thanks,
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I’m usually among the first out of the gate with PSA digital gear, but in this case I’m going to wait to see if anybody says it’s better than a Denefrips Gaia.
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I use Toslink 
My interest in AirLens is as a Roon and Airplay DDC with a display, hopefully with IR remote play/pause/skip via Octave Link, to replace a Squeezebox Touch.
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I thought Ted mentioned advanced Optical in the DS MKII
Somewhere in this topic Paul makes mention that there won’t be a remote. I believe there’s going to be a phone/tablet app.
For this very reason, I chose to get a Roon Nucleus Plus. With a Nucleus and Control4, I don’t have to be concerned about what type of transport controls an endpoint uses. No matter what I install, the transport controls for Roon stay the same.
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Yes I’ve accepted that there won’t be a remote for the AirLens itself and almost certainly not even an IR receiver that would let you bring your own remote. We’ve also recently covered the ground that says there’s no dedicated app for AirLens: you’ll use Roon or AirPlay or JRiver or whatever else and the AirLens will just be the network endpoint for the audio and metadata to go to.
But the Octave Link connector still has question marks over it. If it was just a 12V trigger it wouldn’t have a fancy name. Some kind of low speed data connection has been mentioned. What’s it for? I’m just hoping that maybe the DS DAC Mk II might be able to relay receipt of a play/pause/skip command from its remote over the link to the AirLens and from there a signal could go back over the network to Roon or the AirPlay source or whatever to get the job done.
I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to convey here. I do understand that Roon lets you control it from any device running Roon; also the RAAT protocol lets DDCs/DACs etc tell the core that the user wants to pause or skip etc; and there are 3rd party integration opportunities to add other kinds of control surface.
My main thing is that I really hate having to wake up a device and wait for it to connect to a network and get the current playing status before I can simply pause or skip. An IR remote or similar (IR being the lingua franca of these things for what - 40 years?) has the advantage of being reliably instantaneous. We really shouldn’t lose that. Something like the Harmony Hub (which is what I actually use) with a standard protocol on the back end would be great. Maybe that’s what I should be asking PS Audio for instead. But maybe Octave Link will do what I want. I look forward to finding out the answer to that.
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Doesn’t work for dCS,
Doesn’t work for PS Audio,
Not using USB?.. good enough for me.
The fact you need to work around the USB protocol to get it sounding good says a lot.
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I am listening to a MacBook Pro connected to my DAC with a fine USB cable. If there is something missing or added or distorted I can’t detect it. I doubt you could either. Interface snobbery, a new low.
J/K
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I believe the AirLens will have wireless connectivity…
isn’t the AirLens a different thing than the Gaia? (Streamer vs DDC?)
I’m just looking at it from a very simple data over interface POV. The AirLens will shove data into the DS DAC over I2S, just like a Gaia. I guess to be complete, I should have stated “Gaia plus whatever is feeding the data to it”. One way or another there are ways now to feed data into the DS via I2S. The Gaia by most accounts is superior to things like the Matrix, seemingly regardless of what’s feeding either. If the AL can give me a single box solution for I2S that is superior to the competition then that’s what I’ll wait to hear.
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How much is your USB cable though? 
No snobbery here.
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