Beresford TC-7520 DAC

Regular visitors to this site will know how much of a fan of high quality computer based audio we are and in particular pc audio devices that offer true bit perfect audio performance.

The Beresford TC-7520 DAC is a high quality and highly rated DAC that is perfectly suited to PC digital audio applications because of the inclusion of a USB digital input as well as one other toslink input and two co-ax digital inputs. You only have to do a bit a of research in the various online audio forums to see how many people rave about the Beresford's TC-7520 DAC's performance, to realise the company are on a winner with this particular digital to analogue converter.

One of the main issues with so many PC spdif outputs is that the soundcard locks the output sampling rate at 48 khz and usually only at 16 bit resolution, the rate specified by Intel's original Audio Codec standard for personal computers. Whilst this is not a problem for passing a compressed 5.1 DVD audio signal (AC3/DTS) from a PC to a home cinema receiver which are nearly always 16/48, it does pose rather a problem for FLAC/WMA or MP3 files ripped from a CD which are recorded at 16/44.1 as defined by Philips Red Book standard way back in 1980. Anyone who knows anything about digital audio will tell you resampling 16/44.1 to 16/48 is generally a bad idea, which is why sound cards that can output spdif at 16/44.1 are the preferred choice of audiophiles.

The Beresford TC-7520 gets round this problem entirely because of the USB connector. When you connect the Beresford TC-7520 DAC via USB, the PC will see the DAC as an external soundcard so is able to process the 16/44.1 direct and will accept any digital signal up to 16/48 (If you want to send the Beresford TC-7520 a 24 bit signal, then you will have to use one of the coax or toslink inputs). The other advantage of a USB connection as opposed to a SPDIF connector is the lack of jitter as the USB protocol uses error correction and buffering to ensure efficient packet transfer of data something the SPDIF interface does not have.

Once you have connected a PC to the Beresford TC-7520 DAC, all that remains to be done is to ensure your music software is able to output its sound to the Beresford using a method that bypasses the windows mixer. In XP this means ASIO or Kernel Streaming and under Windows Vista/W7, ASIO or WASAPI output. Foobar is one of the few PC media players that allows for direct output, and essential if the resampling and mixing that the Windows Mixer can incur, athough some people have had similar succes using a Direct Show filter called Reclock.

At only £140, the Beresford TC-7520 DAC offers outstanding value for money, but for those wanting even more performance through an improved power supply, DAC and preamp, the £200 Beresford Caiman may be even more tempting.

This entry was posted on Saturday January 16th, 2010 at 10:00 AM and is filed under Accessories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are now closed.