I'll be working on something similar for audiophile grade Ethernet transmission. Does a clock PLL get sent over the ST fiber, or is it sent over a separate connection?
Separate... like EMM Labs/Playback Designs
I'll be working on something similar for audiophile grade Ethernet transmission. Does a clock PLL get sent over the ST fiber, or is it sent over a separate connection?
when alternative digital interfaces are in the best sounding dacs then the market will go there. users are not driving this, dac makers are.
I'm interface agnostic. but if my Trinity and GG are the best sounding dacs, and they use USB, then I'm using USB. let my ears hear better, i'll be drawn to that better sound with whatever interface it has. my 17 terabytes of music don't care the path they take to the dac.
I'm speaking at the tip top of the market here. I know that there are all kinds of dacs and all sorts of interfaces.
Separate... like EMM Labs/Playback Designs
ST fiber is perfect then. It offers complete isolation from noise, and no jitter is introduced because the clock is sent over a different connection.
(...) I'm interface agnostic. but if my Trinity and GG are the best sounding dacs, and they use USB, then I'm using USB. let my ears hear better, i'll be drawn to that better sound with whatever interface it has. my 17 terabytes of music don't care the path they take to the dac. (...)
It is the only really usable advice. People can have their own rankings of how it should ideally be, but IMHO currently what counts mostly is the implementation for a particular system. As I do not have the time or conditions to try everything I will let the ears of people with longtime reported public experience decide for me ...
Yet so many people insist on using the USB port just because some salesman convinced them that if they place a trinket in the signal path, wonderful things will happen.
that is just not true, at least in my part of the dac market. your 'anti-Regen' centric world is a bit skewed.
I don't know of anyone that choose USB so they use a Regen or similar product. the Regen is just a tweak that some try to improve the sound of their USB connection.
USB intentions came first, the Regen after for some.
maybe a cheap dac was purchased somewhere so they could use a Regen with a USB, but personally I've never heard of it going that way.
I would not agree with him on HDMI in a million years. With HDMI, the audio is slaved to video. Even if you play music only sources, the player manufacturers video to embed the audio in blanking interval. This then lights up a million circuits in the player, making all but the best, best systems suffer.Paul McGowan himself said:
"On a pure sound basis and without regard for available sources that can do more than stream CD quality, Glass is the best, followed by HDMI, XLR and RCA. USB falls lowest on the list just from this single standpoint because of noise issues."
I would not agree with him on HDMI in a million years. With HDMI, the audio is slaved to video. Even if you play music only sources, the player manufacturers video to embed the audio in blanking interval. This then lights up a million circuits in the player, making all but the best, best systems suffer.
Here is an AVR driven by HDMI and S/PDIF (thought async USB):
The graph in red is the HDMi distortion which you can see clearly is higher than async USB driving the same unit's S/PDIF interface.
It gets even worse. These are two identical HDMI measurements on this AVR:
As you can see, performance varies all the time!!!
In this extensive set of measurements I did, Async USB always came out first. And HDMI always dead last.
I thought that is what he meant but he should not call it HDMI. He is just using HDMI connector and wiring, nothing else.What he meant is I2S LVDS over HDMI like they use. He was speaking more in layman terms intended for people who know the interface protocols based on the connectors.
I thought that is what he meant but he should not call it HDMI. He is just using HDMI connector and wiring, nothing else.
A similar technique was used about thirty years ago - Sony and Krell had separate CD transport and DACs having the clock close to the DAC, sending it back to the transport by a separate ST channel.
Hi Guys,
I've been posting some feedback on a few SD card transports on a few other thread. So I thought this would be a better place. There's one transport in particular that's really sparked my interest, and should spark everyone's who is on a quest for best sound. But it only comes on a raw PCB. So you can just have the raw PCB sitting on your audio rack, or you can build it into an enclosure. You also need a 5V power supply. The better the supply, the better the sound. It supports up to 24/384 PCM and DSD 256. From what I hear it's one of the best sounding external transport's money can buy. Best of all it's only $495 plus cost of supply, and case if you want one. It has both I2S/DSD over LVDS and CMOS HDMI output, as well is BNC/Coaxial SPDIF. The HDMI is of course the best option, but I hear the SPDIF is also awesome.
They make it in limited runs, so you need to order fast while they are available. They are on lot 6 now. There has been several revisions over the years, and this latest one is the best yet.
Here it is:
http://www.tachyon.co.jp/~sichoya/SDTrans/SDTrans6.html
I found a guy who builds a case kit for it as well that looks very nice.
http://tec-asai.com/tec-asai_home/xdiary/sdtrans384_os49-32-43bb.html
I suggest using google translate if you can't read Japanese.
There's quite a bit of info on it if you google it. Here's a recent thread about a guy who is using one with his Devialet. And he's only using the SPDIF output!
http://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?tid=935
Yes it's missing all the fancy GUI bells and whistles, but it's still better than using a CD player with CD's.
Anyone looking for an $495 transport that will put standalone server/renderers such as the $17000 Aurender W20 to shame should take this product very seriously.
And for those who want to take it even further, Acko built an high end reclocker (AKL S03) that's compatible with it. It uses crazy good clocks and will take this transport into world class audio territory rivalling the best of the best.
https://sites.google.com/site/ackodac/home
Here's a video of the raw board in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCRd1BN6zEc
very interesting, I have not had much time to explore, but it seems that: The only file format for PCM is WAV (not enough computing power even to convert flac etc.) and all files have to be stored on SDHC cards.
The only problem with external clocks are, the further the clock is from the DAC chip, the more jitter is introduced. So even if you have some crazy good clock, much is lost by the time it makes it to the DAC chip. Having a lower performing clock, but located within an inch or 2 from the DAC chip, can result in better real world jitter performance. The reason external clocks are popular in the pro world is to sync multiple devices together.
Yes I know. Wav just like a CD. So all PCM would need to be decompressed to WAV, but DSD works as is. Small price to pay for sound quality this good. It's still much less of a pain than CD players, Vinyl or R2R tape.
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