Amps and USB Connectivity

Amps with USB port any good?

Increasing number of amps come with USB connectivity to link up to your PC. These amps were to be found only at 'high end' prices till recently. Now there are some for well under £1000; such as the Pioneer A-A9-J.

Few people in this forum have discovered advantages of audio streaming from PC hard drive to hi-fi.

Has anyone tried these type of amps?
Any better than the usual practice of PC > external USB-to-digital converter > DAC > amp ?

 

i had the bel canto S330iu which had a USB dac included... it was an excellent bit of kit. But sounds much better on the end of the vista standard driver than the one that windows XP finds.

Now i have a squeezebox into my dacX which sounds a little cleaner and more detailed. But its also quite a number of extra boxes. Changed the S300 integrated for the dedicated power amp and preamp

 

Whats wrong with a simple 3.5mm to 2 phonos are I am missing something?

Same as these crappy USB turntable things, just connect the above cable from the output of the preamp then into the input of the sound card.

 

What you suggest will work. I used to do that when the 8-bit Sound Blaster card came on the market in early 1990s. But even after all these years, internal sound cards that come fitted as standard leave a lot to be desired. Not only that, they sit in a terrible enviornment. Neither do they have a dedicated power supply. These problems and more are addressed when using an external sound card / DAC combination.

What I am in the dark is the quality of these new amps with USB connectivity. Information is so patchy that I don't even know what they fit inside these amps for USB connectivity.