N.S.A. Leak Puts Focus on System Administrators

As the N.S.A., some companies and the city of San Francisco have learned, information technology administrators, who are vital to keeping the system running and often have access to everything, are in the perfect position if they want to leak sensitive information or blackmail higher-level officials.

“The difficulty comes in an environment where computer networks need to work all the time,” said Christopher P. Simkins, a former Justice Department lawyer whose firm advises companies, including military contractors, on insider threats.

The director of the N.S.A., Gen. Keith B. Alexander, acknowledged the problem in a television interview on Sunday and said his agency would institute “a two-man rule” that would limit the ability of each of its 1,000 system administrators to gain unfettered access to the entire system. The rule, which would require a second check on each attempt to access sensitive information, is already in place in some intelligence agencies. It is a concept borrowed from the field of cryptography, where, in effect, two sets of keys are required to unlock a safe.

From government agencies to corporate America, there is a renewed emphasis on thwarting the rogue I.T. employee. Such in-house breaches are relatively rare, but the N.S.A. leaks have prompted assessments of the best precautions businesses and government can take, from added checks and balances to increased scrutiny during hiring.

“The scariest threat is the systems administrator,” said Eric Chiu, president of Hytrust, a computer security company. “The system administrator has godlike access to systems they manage.”

Asked Sunday about General Alexander’s two-man rule, Dale W. Meyerrose, a former chief information officer for the director of national intelligence, said, “I think what he’s doing is reasonable.”

“There are all kinds of things in life that have two-man rules,” added Mr. Meyerrose, who now runs a business consulting firm. “We’ve had a two-man rule ever since we had nuclear weapons. And when somebody repairs an airplane, an engineer has to check it.”

John R. Schindler, a former N.S.A. counterintelligence officer who now teaches at the Naval War College, agreed that the “buddy system” would help. “But I just don’t see it as a particularly good long-term solution,” he said.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to scrub all your I.T.’s for security issues,” he asked, “and see if there is another Snowden?”

The two-man rule “has existed in other areas of the intelligence community for certain exceptionally sensitive programs where high risk was involved,” he said, “but it’s not a standard procedure.”

Mr. Meyerrose and Mr. Schindler both said that software monitoring systems can also help, though they can be evaded by a knowledgeable systems administrator. The biggest issue for government and industry, they said, is to vet the I.T. candidates more carefully and to watch for any signs of disillusionment after they are hired.

“It’s really a personal reliability issue,” Mr. Meyerrose said.

Insiders of all types going rogue have become a problem for the government and industry over the last decade. One of the most prominent is Pfc. Bradley Manning, who downloaded a vast archive of American military and diplomatic materials from his post in Iraq and gave it to WikiLeaks. But there have been others, including scientists and software developers who stole secrets from American companies where they worked and provided them to China.

Now the spotlight is on the system administrators, who are often the technology workers with the most intimate knowledge of what is moving through their employers’ computer networks.

Gadgetwise Blog: An All-Terrain Sound System

The Rugged Rukus wireless sound system from the Etón Corporation.

Known primarily for its emergency radios and backup batteries, the Etón Corporation broadened its offerings last year with the Rukus Solar, a wireless boombox. This week, Etón introduced the Rukus’s smaller sibling, the Rugged Rukus.

Powered by the sun, the larger Rukus is perfect for outdoor parties like picnics and barbecues. But the compact Rugged Rukus, which offers the same solar power generation and stereo sound, is a better fit for outdoor adventures like camping.

Named for its durable, splash-proof design, the Rugged Rukus weighs a little more than a pound and is the size and shape of a big sandwich. It syncs with any smartphone, tablet or computer with one-touch pairing via Bluetooth (an auxiliary port allows for use with non-Bluetooth devices). And it has a USB port that can be used to charge your device while you listen to music.

The lithium battery in the Rugged Rukus can play music for eight hours on a full charge. Etón claims the device can be fully charged in five hours in direct sunlight or in two and a half hours via a supplied micro-USB cable. The review unit that I tested came fully charged, so I didn’t have an opportunity to verify those claims.

But I did use the device to stream music from my iPhone, and the audio was loud and clear. Unlike its larger counterpart, the Rugged Rukus does not have a bass boost. Not that it was needed; the sound still had plenty of boom.

Two integrated loops on the back of the Rugged Rukus are designed for carabiners, making it more easily portable while you’re on the trail. It would have been nice if Eton had supplied a carabiner, but you can find a sturdy one at any outdoor supply store.

A handy device for any outdoor enthusiast, the Rugged Rukus, which comes in green or black, is available at Amazon.com and Apple and REI stores for $100.

Gadgetwise Blog: Tip of the Week: Find Your System Information Quickly

Want to buy that cool new video game but are unsure how much memory or what kind of processor your computer uses so you can make sure the software will work? Both Windows and Mac OS X keep these details, along with other hardware information, in a convenient place.

In Windows 7, go to the Start menu and type System into the Search box. Select System or System Information in the results to open a window listing your computer’s details. For a quicker way to the information, press the Windows key and the Pause key on the keyboard to open the System window; the Win + Pause keyboard shortcut works in the newer Windows 8 system as well.

On a Mac running recent versions of OS X, go to the Apple menu on the left side of the menu bar and choose About This Mac. The box that appears shows the OS X software version, processor and amount of installed memory. Click the More Info button to see additional details about the computer. If you want a shortcut to even more data, hold down the Option key on the keyboard and return to the Apple menu, where the About This Mac item now says System Information. Select System Information from the menu to get a big list of specifications.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Backing Up a Windows 8 System

Is the File History software in Windows 8 a full backup program for the whole computer, or do I need to buy additional backup software?

The File History utility included with Windows 8 does not fully back up all the files on the computer. It does automatically back up the files you probably care the most about, though, like photos, documents and other items in your Windows libraries, as well as your contacts, your browser favorites and SkyDrive files. With File History, you can get back previous versions of those files, including those that were accidentally deleted from the computer.

You can find File History in the Windows 8 control panel, or you can quickly search for it. To search the computer for the File History utility, press Windows + C on the keyboard or click the right corner of the screen to bring up the Windows 8 “Charms” menu; on a touch-screen computer, put your finger on the right edge of the screen and slide it toward the middle. Select the Search icon on the Charms bar, type in “File History” and choose Settings. Select “File History” when it appears in the list to open the control panel.

Like most backup programs, you need another drive to store the File History archive. You can use an external USB drive or a network location, and Microsoft has instructions for setting up either method on its site.

Although File History has largely supplanted the older built-in Windows backup program, you can still find it on the computer. In the bottom left corner of the File History control panel, click the link for “Windows 7 File Recovery” to open the old Windows backup utility. The Ars Technica site has a tutorial on creating a complete system image, but if you prefer less poking around inside Windows, you can always get a third-party backup program.

Europe Reaches Agreement on System for Patents

BRUSSELS — It only took four decades of wrangling.

On Tuesday, the European Parliament adopted a uniform patent system for Europe. If it goes into affect as expected by early 2014, it would try to remedy the country-by-country approach whose time and costs have long been an impediment to innovation across the European Union.

Achieving the new, unified system could conceivably provide encouragement for another, far more ambitious project that European leaders will be grappling with at their summit meeting this week: a uniform system of banking regulation and supervision for the euro area. But the long, tortuous route to the patent agreement might also serve as a cautionary tale.

The banking union already has bogged down in national battles that some experts warn could drag the process out for years — particularly if changes to the Union’s treaties are needed to endow the central bank with new and wide-ranging supervisory powers, or to set up a joint financial backstop to ensure the orderly winding up of failing banks.

“What’s clear is that the E.U. continues to operate on a hopelessly optimistic time scale,” wrote Mats Persson, the director of Open Europe, a research group, in a briefing note on Tuesday. Mr. Persson was referring to the time it would take to set up a “proper safety net” for Europe’s banks, including a bank resolution fund.

In the case of the patent, decades of discussions resulted in an unsatisfactory compromise, according to Bruno van Pottelsberghe, the dean of the Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management. The new system will “still be a mess” and “we should not expect any of a change in Europe’s innovative performance,” Mr. van Pottelsberghe said.

Meeting in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the European Parliament voted 484 to 164 to pass the key plank of the new patent system. Nation-by-nation vetting of the new system will formally start in February, when governments are expected to sign a treaty creating special patent courts.

The system would supplement the current patchwork of patent rules in the Union; under the current system, a ruling in one of 27 countries has no automatic bearing on another. The patchwork approach has made protecting inventions and innovations in Europe 15 times more expensive than in the United States, harming competitiveness, according to the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

The cost of patent protection should initially drop to around €6,500, or $8,450, from around €36,000, or $46,790, the commission says. That is largely because the new so-called unitary patents granted by the European Patent Office in Munich would no longer need to be validated in all of the countries where protection is sought. Nor would it need to be translated into all local languages. Instead, English, German or French would suffice.

Benoît Battistelli, the president of the European Patent Office office, said the decision on Tuesday would “equip the European economy with a truly supranational patent system.”

Yet the long, tangled history of working toward a common patent — repeatedly shelved after bumping up against national interests and amid squabbling over languages — is a timely reminder of how much easier it is to make commitments to a unified Europe than to put unity into practice.

In the case of the banking rules, also known as banking union, E.U. governments still must overcome differences over its most fundamental element: a single banking supervisor operating under the aegis of the European Central Bank.

European finance ministers are expected to work through the night on Wednesday in Brussels debating whether a new supervisor would oversee all 6,000 lenders in the euro area. France, Germany, Sweden, Hungary and Britain are among countries with concerns about the plan. The timing for an agreement “is likely to slip, as member states remain far apart on a number of key substantive issues,” Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst for the Eurasia Group, wrote in a briefing note Tuesday.

On Thursday, the finance ministers will give way to the European Union’s 27 leaders, gathering for their year-end summit meeting. When the leaders met in June, their joint decisions were cast as the starting point for tighter economic and monetary union in Europe. A central pillar of that agreement was a banking union, which would end the so-called doom loop in which frail banks endanger national finances and cause countries to need bailouts.

Gadgetwise Blog: To Choose a Tablet, First Choose an Operating System

Since the iPad was introduced in 2010, tablets have gone from “Who needs it?” to “How did I live without it?” They are lightweight and easier to tote than laptops, but offer many of the same Web browsing capabilities. They are generally better used for consuming content, like movies, music and books, than for creating content. So while they are useful for e-mail, it can be a challenge to use one as a machine for work — although it can be done.

Probably the first thing to consider is what operating system you use for your other devices. Using your tablet to share photos, music and movies with your other household computers and phones is easiest if the tablet runs on the same system, whether it is Apple, Android or something else.

If you plan on using it independently of your other machines, then the operating system is not a concern, except for one thing: apps. Those are the small computer programs that add features to tablets and phones. Apple still has the greatest number of apps and generally gets the new ones first. Android has fewer but is catching up. The Windows Surface tablet is still new enough that its associated app store has not fully developed.

There are two ways to connect a tablet to the Internet: Wi-Fi and cellular phone networks. Models that can use a phone network let you connect wherever you may be, but are generally more expensive and tend to have less battery life. Tablets that use Wi-Fi can connect only through an open hotspot (or through a phone that has hotspot capability). For instance, an iPad with 16 gigabytes of memory costs $500, but the same tablet with a phone network connection is $630 — and you will have to buy data service for it.

When it comes to tablet size, to thine own self be true. Are you more likely to use a tablet that is easy to carry, like the iPad Mini, with a 7.9-inch screen, or one with a bigger, easier-to-see screen, like the Samsung Nexus 10 Android tablet with a 10-inch screen?

If you object to typing on a glass screen, many tablets have accessory keypads, like the one you can buy with the $600 Windows Surface tablet. Other tablets with Bluetooth capability can often link with a generic keyboard, which can be had for around $50.

It’s worth checking the speed of the tablet’s processor if you are going to watch a lot of video — faster is better, of course. To see how much storage you will need, check how much space your music, movies, photos and documents take up on your computer now. Then ask yourself if you need to cart all that stuff around. Storage can be expensive.

Norwegian Airline to Move Entertainment System to Wi-Fi

PARIS — Air travel may provide a feeling of freedom, but in-flight entertainment options still tend to be more tethered. That may be about to change.

Norwegian Air Shuttle, one of the biggest airlines in Scandinavia, and Ink, which provides magazines for about 30 carriers worldwide, said Tuesday that they planned to introduce an entertainment system next year that would finally thrust in-flight media more thoroughly into the digital era.

Using the carrier’s free Wi-Fi service, passengers will have access to a range of content, including music, video and travel articles from the carrier’s in-flight magazine, on their smartphones, tablets or laptops. The service will operate from a dedicated online portal, and will be accessible even as planes are cruising at 30,000 feet, or 9,100 meters, or more.

“We wanted to rethink the whole way we organize travel content, from the beginning to the end of a customer journey,” said Stine Steffensen Borke, marketing director at Norwegian.

A number of other airlines have previously upgraded their in-flight media using digital technology — providing, for example, versions of newspapers or magazines, including in-flight publications, for download to passengers’ laptops.

And in-flight entertainment systems long ago moved beyond a handful of channels playing repeating loops of movies and music. But these services generally still operate from an offline server, rather than being connected to the Internet.

Ink and Norwegian say their new service is more ambitious because it is built on the carrier’s Wi-Fi service, which is available on 80 percent of Norwegian’s fleet of 68 planes. Most other carriers that offer Wi-Fi charge passengers for the service, limiting its usefulness as a conduit for in-flight media; Norwegian sees it as a universal service.

Jeffrey O’Rourke, chief executive of Ink, said this opened up new horizons, including the possibility of offering location-based content. For example, articles from the carrier’s magazine and its archives could be served to passengers according to the destinations they are heading for or flying over, he said. Travelers could provide feedback via “social” functions.

Ink also plans to sell advertising for the Norwegian in-flight site.

“In-flight magazines are a great tool for hitting everyone on a plane with the same messages,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “In-flight Wi-Fi is a way to provide a much more diverse and granular offer.”

Norwegian plans to introduce the new portal in January, and to begin additional services throughout the year.

Mr. O’Rourke said Ink was already working on a similar project for another client, the Eurostar train service linking Paris, London, Brussels and other destinations via the Channel Tunnel.

While the Norwegian plan has a digital focus, the old-fashioned in-flight magazine has not been forgotten. That, too, is being remade, and will carry references to the carrier’s online service.

Ms. Steffensen Borke said there were no plans, for now, to phase out the paper publication.

“I’m still surprised by how many people read the magazine,” she said. “At the moment, it’s still a useful channel for us.”

National Briefing | South: South Carolina: State Computer System Is Hacked

The Republican budget plan would kill research that leads to new jobs.

Room for Debate asks: Does the prevalence of racy Halloween costumes mask our fears of death and dying?

Duplicate Payments Bedevil V.A. Pension System, Workers Say

Puzzled, she set the claim aside and began digging into computer files for an answer. What she found surprised and worried her: the department’s database contained duplicate records for the widow, and the system was trying to pay her twice. It was also recommending a retroactive payment dating back months — though the widow had already been paid for that period.

After seeing the same problem in other claims, Ms. Ruell, who works on a quality review team at a veterans pension management center in Philadelphia, says she raised red flags with her bosses. If she, one of scores of payment authorizers nationwide, was just noticing the duplicate payments, was it not likely that the department had inadvertently overpaid many other people for years?

Two years later, that concern has not been resolved, Ms. Ruell and several other pension management workers say.

The department says duplicate payments are rare — perhaps fewer than 100 a year. A robust system of checks and balances, human and digital, routinely prevents a vast majority of such payments, said David R. McLenachen, the director of the department’s pensions and fiduciary service.

But Ms. Ruell and several of her colleagues, who described the problem for a reporter because they felt the department was not addressing it, believe that the duplicate payments are far more common, and costly, than their leadership acknowledges.

They say that they see new cases weekly and that the problem also occurs at the department’s other pension centers in Milwaukee and St. Paul. They express frustration that the department seems unable to prevent the creation of new duplicate records that can lead to duplicate payments. And they say their superiors do not consistently try to recoup overpayments — though the department denies that assertion.

“I’m just bothered the way money is wasted and no one cares,” said Ms. Ruell, 37, a lawyer who has worked at the pension center for five years.

The issue is starting to get attention in Washington. The department’s Office of Inspector General has begun looking into it, a spokeswoman said, and a congressman from the Philadelphia area says he will ask that the department provide an accounting of duplicate payments by Oct. 31.

“No one has a real handle on this,” Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Bucks County, said in an interview. “The V.A. management appears to believe it is not their responsibility to get our tax dollars back from people who should not have received the money in the first place.”

The department did not allow Ms. Ruell’s supervisors to talk about the duplicate payments. But Mr. McLenachen disputed her assertions, saying he was confident that managers were trying to collect overpayments.

“Our field employees are required to follow procedures,” he said.

Mr. McLenachen, however, acknowledged that it would be hard to determine the precise number of duplicate payments without beneficiaries coming forward voluntarily. Ms. Ruell says people have returned duplicate checks on their own, but only occasionally.

The duplicate payments are the flip side of the attempt to speedily eliminate a backlog in the processing of claims. While the backlog is widely blamed for delays in compensation to veterans, overpayments are unlikely to draw much criticism from veterans advocates.

Workers say that both delayed payment and overpayment stem from the same circumstances: too few workers trying to process too many claims in too little time. The pressure to work swiftly despite a complex system of benefits and rules, along with outdated or trouble-prone technology, has made human and computer errors all too common, the workers say.

Duplicate Payments Bedevil V.A. Pension System, Workers Say

Puzzled, she set the claim aside and began digging into computer files for an answer. What she found surprised and worried her: the department’s database contained duplicate records for the widow, and the system was trying to pay her twice. It was also recommending a retroactive payment dating back months — though the widow had already been paid for that period.

After seeing the same problem in other claims, Ms. Ruell, who works on a quality review team at a veterans pension management center in Philadelphia, says she raised red flags with her bosses. If she, one of scores of payment authorizers nationwide, was just noticing the duplicate payments, was it not likely that the department had inadvertently overpaid many other people for years?

Two years later, that concern has not been resolved, Ms. Ruell and several other pension management workers say.

The department says duplicate payments are rare — perhaps fewer than 100 a year. A robust system of checks and balances, human and digital, routinely prevents a vast majority of such payments, said David R. McLenachen, the director of the department’s pensions and fiduciary service.

But Ms. Ruell and several of her colleagues, who described the problem for a reporter because they felt the department was not addressing it, believe that the duplicate payments are far more common, and costly, than their leadership acknowledges.

They say that they see new cases weekly and that the problem also occurs at the department’s other pension centers in Milwaukee and St. Paul. They express frustration that the department seems unable to prevent the creation of new duplicate records that can lead to duplicate payments. And they say their superiors do not consistently try to recoup overpayments — though the department denies that assertion.

“I’m just bothered the way money is wasted and no one cares,” said Ms. Ruell, 37, a lawyer who has worked at the pension center for five years.

The issue is starting to get attention in Washington. The department’s Office of Inspector General has begun looking into it, a spokeswoman said, and a congressman from the Philadelphia area says he will ask that the department provide an accounting of duplicate payments by Oct. 31.

“No one has a real handle on this,” Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Bucks County, said in an interview. “The V.A. management appears to believe it is not their responsibility to get our tax dollars back from people who should not have received the money in the first place.”

The department did not allow Ms. Ruell’s supervisors to talk about the duplicate payments. But Mr. McLenachen disputed her assertions, saying he was confident that managers were trying to collect overpayments.

“Our field employees are required to follow procedures,” he said.

Mr. McLenachen, however, acknowledged that it would be hard to determine the precise number of duplicate payments without beneficiaries coming forward voluntarily. Ms. Ruell says people have returned duplicate checks on their own, but only occasionally.

The duplicate payments are the flip side of the attempt to speedily eliminate a backlog in the processing of claims. While the backlog is widely blamed for delays in compensation to veterans, overpayments are unlikely to draw much criticism from veterans advocates.

Workers say that both delayed payment and overpayment stem from the same circumstances: too few workers trying to process too many claims in too little time. The pressure to work swiftly despite a complex system of benefits and rules, along with outdated or trouble-prone technology, has made human and computer errors all too common, the workers say.

Bits Blog: An Alert System for Security Breaches

It was, no doubt, the year of the security breach.

Hackers breached LinkedIn, LastFM.com, eHarmony, Yahoo and other sites, then posted customers’ usernames, passwords, e-mail addresses and device IDs to the Internet for all to see. In most cases,  the consumers had to dig through hackers’ data dumps to find out what, if any, of their information had been compromised, then scurry to change their log-in credentials across many sites.

Now, with breaches on the rise, some companies have started offering customers new services to save them the trouble. LastPass, a service for managing passwords, said on Tuesday that it had partnered with PwnedList, a database of leaked usernames and passwords, to alert customers if a Web site was breached and if their information was included in the data dump.

The company will perform daily scans of PwnedList’s database of 24 million (and growing) publicly leaked usernames and passwords and alert customers by e-mail if a domain was breached, if their log-in information was compromised and if they used the same password for the breached Web site elsewhere. In a blog post, LastPass said it planned to offer its alert system, called LastPass Sentry,  free.

A similar service for potentially more sensitive information — like credit card and Social Security numbers — is available through AllClearID, an identity protection service. This year, AllClearID debuted a free mobile app for the iPhone and iPad that alerts consumers if their credit cards or Social Security numbers have been stolen or if thieves are using their child’s identity.

AllClearID pulls that information from the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, an organization that partners with law enforcement agencies and companies like PayPal and Microsoft as a repository for stolen consumer information. Any time these agencies or companies encounter stolen credentials, they send them to the alliance. Until this year, the alliance reported any stolen credentials to the companies that had issued them.

The AllClear ID mobile app and LassPass service mark the first time consumers will be alerted directly.

Tool Kit: A Sound System as Resonant a Concert Hall - Tool Kit

You see, music travels to the ear as a smooth wave of sound. But digital music — CDs or MP3s on a music player — stores only bits of information taken at intervals along those sound waves.

Later, your sound system will play a sophisticated game of connect-the-dots to turn that choppy data back into a wave. That takes math. How authentic the playback sounds depends largely on how well the system turns digital dots back into the original wave.

That de-digitizing is done by a computer chip and software combination called a digital-to-analog converter (or DAC) — and here is a little secret of the audio industry — to keep prices down, manufacturers often scrimp on that part. That means mediocre math.

But you can upgrade your processor to make your music sound much more as if it were live, and it doesn’t take any soldering. Just plug an undistinguished box called an outboard DAC between your digital music player (like an iPod, CD player or computer) and an amplifier. (The devices use a USB, optical, 30-pin or coaxial cable or RCA connector cable.) It does better math to make better sound.

They can cost more than $15,000, though some are only $100.

But spending a lot of money won’t necessarily guarantee better sound. Any sound system is only as good as its weakest link, so a $500 DAC isn’t likely to improve a really rudimentary receiver. And because of variances when you mix audio components, a specific DAC may sound very different in your system than in your buddy’s.

Despite all those caveats, it’s not hopeless. After hours of testing several DACs on my 30-year-old home hi-fi and many more hours in a modern high-end system at Soundscape, an audio store in Baltimore, a rotating listening panel of employees and customers came to as close as a consensus as you’ll find among audio buffs. We listened to a stereo wired so we could switch between an $1,800 CD player and a computer playing the same song using a DAC. We also listened to the song on the computer without the DAC. The listeners didn’t know which they were hearing.

Though we mostly listened to a variety of music converted to the Apple lossless format, which makes files smaller but preserves fidelity, we also tried out some MP3 files, which are lower fidelity but take up less space in a player.

We had previously tested low-priced DACs and were disappointed. We found that several costing around $350 provided the best value.

MUSIC HALL DAC15.2 $300

Audiophiles like a big “soundstage” — their term for the impression that the instruments in the recording are spread apart, like a large orchestra on a wide, deep stage of a concert hall. The Music Hall seemed to increase the feeling of width, though not depth.

The most marked characteristic was the brightness it added to instruments in the higher ranges, which is what the company was going for. “If you can separate the instruments, especially in the higher register, you are doing something right,” said Roy Hall, Music Hall’s founder.

SCHIIT BIFROST $350 without USB, $450 with USB

The crowd favorite, it has something rarely found in a $350 DAC: a 32-bit analog processing chip. That helps the converter reconstruct those sound waves better. The Bifrost can also be upgraded, so if USB or processor technology changes, Schiit can install an update.

The outstanding difference was that the Bifrost reliably made the soundstage larger in each dimension. Ed Dorsey, co-owner of Soundscape, said that switching from the DAC while listening to a CD of “All Right Now,” a classic rock song by Free, “was like going from stereo to mono.”

“Wow,” he added.

HRT MUSIC STREAMER II+ $350

The HRT, the smallest DAC tested and the one with the sleekest case, is the only one powered by a USB cable, not an outside power supply. The company said that this helped eliminate noise from a power supply, but I suspect you’d have to have a sensitive sound system (and sensitive ears) to hear it.

Of the DACs, it sounded closest to the original CD versions. “My approach is to create a product that doesn’t editorialize the sound,” said Kevin Halverson, the company’s chief technical officer. Over all, listeners preferred the bigger sound from the HRT DAC over the CD.

CAMBRIDGE AUDIO DACMAGIC 100 $370

This was an odd case. It did better on orchestral music than rock songs, more so than the other DACs. But that is in line with the company’s goals. “We have, at Cambridge, always used live unamplified acoustic music as what we design for,” said John Bevier, national sales and product manager at Cambridge Audio. Those tend to be the recordings that audiophiles are most interested in, he said. Rock doesn’t do as well, he said, because its sound is engineered for the lower fidelity systems it is most likely to be played on.

NUFORCE ICON HDP $450

This demonstrates why audio is so subjective. No single aspect of the NuForce stood out as the best, yet the listeners gave it high marks.

Audiophiles use an exasperatingly ambiguous word, “involving.” It basically denotes how much the sound draws you in. After hearing “All Right Now” countless times over five hours, I found myself unconsciously tapping my foot. That would qualify as involving.

One customer, James Rosenthal, said the soundstage was wider, but less deep than that of the CD player, but he also thought the instruments sounded livelier. A worthwhile trade-off, he said. We agreed that it added some of the smooth richness of tube equipment.

At any listening party with audiophiles, be prepared for an argument. These guys nearly come to fisticuffs arguing over the best method of wiring a DAC. Certainly tweaks can optimize performance, like setting the computer to play at the appropriate bit rate to your DAC ($10 software called BitPerfect automates the process for Macs; it can be set manually on some PCs).

While deliberating details, Mr. Dorsey reminded everyone of a crucial fact. “The bigger point here,” he said, “is these things made your computer sound as good as an $1,800 CD player.”

Tool Kit: A Sound System as Resonant a Concert Hall - Tool Kit

You see, music travels to the ear as a smooth wave of sound. But digital music — CDs or MP3s on a music player — stores only bits of information taken at intervals along those sound waves.

Later, your sound system will play a sophisticated game of connect-the-dots to turn that choppy data back into a wave. That takes math. How authentic the playback sounds depends largely on how well the system turns digital dots back into the original wave.

That de-digitizing is done by a computer chip and software combination called a digital-to-analog converter (or DAC) — and here is a little secret of the audio industry — to keep prices down, manufacturers often scrimp on that part. That means mediocre math.

But you can upgrade your processor to make your music sound much more as if it were live, and it doesn’t take any soldering. Just plug an undistinguished box called an outboard DAC between your digital music player (like an iPod, CD player or computer) and an amplifier. (The devices use a USB, optical, 30-pin or coaxial cable or RCA connector cable.) It does better math to make better sound.

They can cost more than $15,000, though some are only $100.

But spending a lot of money won’t necessarily guarantee better sound. Any sound system is only as good as its weakest link, so a $500 DAC isn’t likely to improve a really rudimentary receiver. And because of variances when you mix audio components, a specific DAC may sound very different in your system than in your buddy’s.

Despite all those caveats, it’s not hopeless. After hours of testing several DACs on my 30-year-old home hi-fi and many more hours in a modern high-end system at Soundscape, an audio store in Baltimore, a rotating listening panel of employees and customers came to as close as a consensus as you’ll find among audio buffs. We listened to a stereo wired so we could switch between an $1,800 CD player and a computer playing the same song using a DAC. We also listened to the song on the computer without the DAC. The listeners didn’t know which they were hearing.

Though we mostly listened to a variety of music converted to the Apple lossless format, which makes files smaller but preserves fidelity, we also tried out some MP3 files, which are lower fidelity but take up less space in a player.

We had previously tested low-priced DACs and were disappointed. We found that several costing around $350 provided the best value.

MUSIC HALL DAC15.2 $300

Audiophiles like a big “soundstage” — their term for the impression that the instruments in the recording are spread apart, like a large orchestra on a wide, deep stage of a concert hall. The Music Hall seemed to increase the feeling of width, though not depth.

The most marked characteristic was the brightness it added to instruments in the higher ranges, which is what the company was going for. “If you can separate the instruments, especially in the higher register, you are doing something right,” said Roy Hall, Music Hall’s founder.

SCHIIT BIFROST $350 without USB, $450 with USB

The crowd favorite, it has something rarely found in a $350 DAC: a 32-bit analog processing chip. That helps the converter reconstruct those sound waves better. The Bifrost can also be upgraded, so if USB or processor technology changes, Schiit can install an update.

The outstanding difference was that the Bifrost reliably made the soundstage larger in each dimension. Ed Dorsey, co-owner of Soundscape, said that switching from the DAC while listening to a CD of “All Right Now,” a classic rock song by Free, “was like going from stereo to mono.”

“Wow,” he added.

HRT MUSIC STREAMER II+ $350

The HRT, the smallest DAC tested and the one with the sleekest case, is the only one powered by a USB cable, not an outside power supply. The company said that this helped eliminate noise from a power supply, but I suspect you’d have to have a sensitive sound system (and sensitive ears) to hear it.

Of the DACs, it sounded closest to the original CD versions. “My approach is to create a product that doesn’t editorialize the sound,” said Kevin Halverson, the company’s chief technical officer. Over all, listeners preferred the bigger sound from the HRT DAC over the CD.

CAMBRIDGE AUDIO DACMAGIC 100 $370

This was an odd case. It did better on orchestral music than rock songs, more so than the other DACs. But that is in line with the company’s goals. “We have, at Cambridge, always used live unamplified acoustic music as what we design for,” said John Bevier, national sales and product manager at Cambridge Audio. Those tend to be the recordings that audiophiles are most interested in, he said. Rock doesn’t do as well, he said, because its sound is engineered for the lower fidelity systems it is most likely to be played on.

NUFORCE ICON HDP $450

This demonstrates why audio is so subjective. No single aspect of the NuForce stood out as the best, yet the listeners gave it high marks.

Audiophiles use an exasperatingly ambiguous word, “involving.” It basically denotes how much the sound draws you in. After hearing “All Right Now” countless times over five hours, I found myself unconsciously tapping my foot. That would qualify as involving.

One customer, James Rosenthal, said the soundstage was wider, but less deep than that of the CD player, but he also thought the instruments sounded livelier. A worthwhile trade-off, he said. We agreed that it added some of the smooth richness of tube equipment.

At any listening party with audiophiles, be prepared for an argument. These guys nearly come to fisticuffs arguing over the best method of wiring a DAC. Certainly tweaks can optimize performance, like setting the computer to play at the appropriate bit rate to your DAC ($10 software called BitPerfect automates the process for Macs; it can be set manually on some PCs).

While deliberating details, Mr. Dorsey reminded everyone of a crucial fact. “The bigger point here,” he said, “is these things made your computer sound as good as an $1,800 CD player.”

Tool Kit: A System Clears the Clutter When Buying Tech Products

I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds remarkably close to what buying tech products can feel like. (Or maybe I’m too emotionally invested.)

Think about all the variables you have to account for when buying a new TV, printer or laptop. First, you have to figure out what it is you want to buy — which is often no easy task, given the plethora of brands out there.

Some brands even have their own plethora of models. Have you ever looked at Panasonic’s site for TVs? It has seven different 65-inch TVs for sale. Not three, not even five — seven. Who can sort through all that, much less keep the model numbers straight?

Once you have sifted through all the details and made your decision, it would be nice to know that the product you’ve set your heart on is not going to be replaced soon. Nobody wants to suffer the indignity of getting the Platinum 3300xl, only to discover that a new Platinum 3400xls (now with TurboLasers!) will hit stores next month for the same price.

Then you have to figure out where to buy your carefully considered choice. And there, you run into two major issues: You don’t want to pay too much, but you also want a retailer that is reliable.

I’ve developed a little system to address these problems, a series of steps that helps ensure I’m getting a good deal when I am shopping — whatever the product I’m buying. Once I’ve run through it, I can rest easy knowing I got what I wanted and paid the right price for it.

CONFIRM YOUR CHOICE. There are many variables to consider when deciding whether a product is right for you. That being said, when I shop for tech items I generally go to the same few sites, either to confirm the choice I reached on my own or to help guide me to a choice if I am not well versed in the category.

The first site I always go to is thewirecutter.com. The Wirecutter could also have been named showmethegoodone.com, because that is what it does. Its independent reviewers do not provide an exhaustive library of product reviews; they just tell you which product is the best in a given category. If you are looking for, say, a laptop on The Wirecutter, you will find a well-annotated shortlist of laptops organized like this: “best laptop,” “best gaming laptop,” “best cheap laptop.”

There are only a few subcategories for each product type, so you are not caught between meaningless distinctions: “best laptop for students” alongside “best laptop for teenagers.”

Each selection is bolstered by an authoritative, concise article that explains how the reviewer came to this conclusion.

Even better, The Wirecutter stays up to date. Recently, under the entry for “Best Laptop” (the site awards this designation to Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Air, and I would have to agree) was an update made two days after Apple announced upgrades to its laptop line. “We’re waiting for the reviews of the new Ivy Bridge-powered MacBook Air and other competitors,” the entry reads. “Should be any day now. Give us a week or two, and don’t buy anything right now.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

WATCH FOR OBSOLESCENCE You want to know that what you want to buy is the most current version — and will stay that way for a while.

A couple of years ago, some exceedingly bright minds from the worlds of computer science and business created Farecast, a site that takes reams of data about airline ticket pricing and analyzes it to let consumers know if the fares for trips they want to take at a given moment are going to go up or down soon. The price-prediction engine was later bought by Microsoft and incorporated into that company’s Bing Travel site.

The founders of Farecast then turned their attention to consumer technology. This was much more challenging because new products are being replaced by even newer products at an alarming rate. Decide.com is the result.

On the Decide site, you can search for tech products and find out whether one is about to be supplanted by a newer, better model, as well as whether the price is likely to rise or fall. Decide uses all kinds of algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence to comb not only pricing data, but also articles and blog posts to predict a product’s price and life span.

Armed with that data, you can either move ahead and buy with confidence, or lie low for a little while and feel extra knowledgeable.

FIND THE RIGHT RETAILER. Decide can also send you to an online retailer. But it pays to do a little double-checking.

Tool Kit: A System Clears the Clutter When Buying Tech Products

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