How to get the best digital signal from PC?

[Flecko]

Hi Peter and everyoneelse,
I am using a usb-spdif converter to feed my Chord DSC1100 DAC. Before I was using the spdif out of my rme-hammerfall soundcard but the usb device is better. Now I discovered a special driver for usb-asio from aqvox which sounds realy great. But it costs 100€ so i like to know if there is something better bevor i spend the money on that driver.
With xxhighend, some win7 tweaks and cMP I have now a better spdif-signal than with my Pioneer PD-S06 CD-Player. But it is not that much better. I like to know a few things:
Is there a better way to obtain a spdif signal than with usb-spdif converter?
Do you know a usb-spdif converter using asynchronous mode (my usb-spdif device from hoer-wege is just synchronous)?
What else can I do to improve the sound quality from my PC? I read often that PC must be a lot better even than the best transports. The Pioneer is great but not the best, so there must be some space to improve further.
To my setup:
I have a core2dou with asus pq5 pro board, fanless PSU (150€!), Bluerayburner LG, made some tweaks in device manager, shuted down services, in generel i did what they said on cplay/cmp homepage. I get a delay of 120us with my system. it is ok but i have seen some of you have a much better performance.
Thanks for your help! Greetings Adrian

[PeterSt]

Hi there Adrian,

I could go into many details regarding your post, but I guess your own experiences can always tell better (of course, sadly, you expected more out of it). So, let me for now stick to this :

As far as I can tell the HiFace is an USB->SPDIF converter which works asynchronously (around 130 euro). But, it is in the beginning of its life cycle, and many people have problems with it. A WASAPI driver wasn't available until a few days back, and I don't know the status of that at this moment. Now, I am waiting for a HiFace myself in order to at least let it work. When that has been done, I guess it will be a very good converter, just because of its asynchronous operation (if I am right on that one).

So, let's keep in touch. It shouldn't be long from now until I have it (courtesy of boleary).
Peter

[Flecko]

Thank you for that information. I just saved 100€ I read in the diyaudio thread. They say it could be connected directly to the usb port. I use 5m usb cable "directly" into my usb-spdif-dac without spdif cable. Whats your experience with digital cable? Is it better to use 5m spdif cable than 5m usb?

[PeterSt]

5m USB is better, for sure when asynchronously used. Coincidentally I used 12m myself yesterday to test something, and that still works (isochronously). This was not USB powered of course (4.5m is the maximum for that officlially).

With SPDIF I wouldn't go longer as around 1m.

[Tony S]

Hi Adrian,

I just started using the Musiland Monitor 02 US dac/usb-spdif converter that does asynchronous quite well at around $135- $150.  I'm still trying to get familiar with the unit, works well as a stand alone dac and enjoying it with my NOS dac.  I haven't had too much time to do some serious listening but from what I'm hearing, in my less than ideal listening room, is quite amazing.  There are other versions, a dac only unit and a converter only unit, that are usb powered.  The 02 is AC powered.  Once I get a chance to do some more listening and trying Peter's latest software upgrade I'll post my thoughts on the Musiland.  Hope this helps

Tony

[jkeny]

If I could pitch in here as I have experience of both the Musiland 01US & Hiface units. I'm a tweaker so I bought these with the intention of getting the best sound out of them. Both use asynchronous USB which attracted me.

First, I bought the Musiland & was impressed with the stock sound but then I heard what a difference in SQ I got by supplying an external 5V supply instead of USB 5V. This set me on a path of PS mods - I'll provide links if anyone is interested. The result was a transformation.

BUT, I knew the limitation of the Musiland DAC was the audio clock generation (the various audio clocks are synthesised from one 24MHz clock, AFAIR) & I heard about the HiFace which had this problem addressed - it uses 2 physical low jitter clocks on-board. Stock, this sounded as good as the fully modded Musiland. When I modded the internal PS of the HiFace - it now soared in SQ - smooth & silky, like very good analogue with lots of detail

I can't wait to hear the XXHighEnd through the HiFace

Just my 2c for anybody looking for the best sound out of PC.

[GerardA]

Hi John,

That would be very interesting!
I ordered a Hiface, but it seems we all have to wait a long time to get this precious object.
But now Peter made his engine 4 so worderfull I really wondered if a Hiface can still make it sound much better!

Smooth and silky like very good analogue with lots of detail

So keep us informed on your findings (and your mods!).

[jkeny]

Hi John,

That would be very interesting!
I ordered a Hiface, but it seems we all have to wait a long time to get this precious object.
But now Peter made his engine 4 so worderfull I really wondered if a Hiface can still make it sound much better!

Of course! Improving the source will greatly improve the playback. Remember XXHighend can only play what it is given.

Smooth and silky like very good analogue with lots of detail

So keep us informed on your findings (and your mods!).

[/quote]Here's the link to my mods with pics about half-way into the thread http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/153191-m2tech-hiface-usb-spdif-24-192khz-asynch.html?highlight=m2tech

John

[PeterSt]

John, what I wonder, is whether you already found where your i2s ground came from ...

For 2 weeks I have been thinking of removing the i2s ground and see what happens, but it is too stupid to even start doing it. Even with the unit (NOS1) open in front of me and the iron hot yesterday, I still didn't do it. Then I read your thread today ...

Thanks,
Peter

[jkeny]

John, what I wonder, is whether you already found where your i2s ground came from ...

I don't know, Peter? I guess it must have been using one or other of the signal pins for returning the ground. What I can say is that I found no noticeable difference in sound with ground connected or not-connected. So, my conclusion was not to continue with a practise that might cause other difficulties as it conferred no sonic benefit.

For 2 weeks I have been thinking of removing the i2s ground and see what happens, but it is too stupid to even start doing it. Even with the unit (NOS1) open in front of me and the iron hot yesterday, I still didn't do it. Then I read your thread today ...

Thanks,
Peter

I've done many stupid things - some have worked & some have failed - but it's all a learning process

John

[PeterSt]

Thank you John. Trying, of course, takes 2 seconds only - but if it works it may take quite some time to find out how the ground is flowing, whether that additionally harms, and how things will go in "your house".

Peter

[jkeny]

Thank you John. Trying, of course, takes 2 seconds only - but if it works it may take quite some time to find out how the ground is flowing, whether that additionally harms, and how things will go in "your house".

Peter

I couldn't have said it better myself! My brief experiment showed me that there was no sonic advantage "in my set-up" to have the ground isolated at the I2S stage. I was using a USB transport - perhaps it would make a difference if the PC ground could have been isolated but with hi-speed USB 2.0 (480Mbps), there is, as yet, no way to galvanically isolate!

[Flecko]

Thanks for the information. it is a pitty the m2tech is not relay designed to be a highend converter and still need mods. But it seems worth a try if not something better will show up.

[jkeny]

Thanks for the information. it is a pitty the m2tech is not relay designed to be a highend converter and still need mods. But it seems worth a try if not something better will show up.

A highend converter is/will be available BUT do you want to spend thousands of dollars - look to dCS, Wavelength, Empirical Audio - they all have USB products at these prices?

[ivo]

Hello Tony S,

I just started using the Musiland Monitor 02 US dac/usb-spdif converter that does asynchronous quite well at around $135- $150.  I'm still trying to get familiar with the unit, works well as a stand alone dac and enjoying it with my NOS dac.  I haven't had too much time to do some serious listening but from what I'm hearing, in my less than ideal listening room, is quite amazing.  There are other versions, a dac only unit and a converter only unit, that are usb powered.  The 02 is AC powered.  Once I get a chance to do some more listening and trying Peter's latest software upgrade I'll post my thoughts on the Musiland.  Hope this helps

So, are you still using Musiland 02 US? Are you able to run enigne#4 with it? Describe please your XX setup with this DAC.
I am interested if it is possible to run engine#3 and engine#4 with it in DAP and QAP modes???

Ivo

[ivo]

Hello jkeny,

If I could pitch in here as I have experience of both the Musiland 01US & Hiface units. I'm a tweaker so I bought these with the intention of getting the best sound out of them. Both use asynchronous USB which attracted me.

First, I bought the Musiland & was impressed with the stock sound but then I heard what a difference in SQ I got by supplying an external 5V supply instead of USB 5V. This set me on a path of PS mods - I'll provide links if anyone is interested. The result was a transformation.

BUT, I knew the limitation of the Musiland DAC was the audio clock generation (the various audio clocks are synthesised from one 24MHz clock, AFAIR) & I heard about the HiFace which had this problem addressed - it uses 2 physical low jitter clocks on-board. Stock, this sounded as good as the fully modded Musiland. When I modded the internal PS of the HiFace - it now soared in SQ - smooth & silky, like very good analogue with lots of detail

So, have you tried Monitor 02 US - this is the second version. I am wondering how it might compare with HiFace unit? Based on your post, HiFace is better out of box than Musiland 01US.

Ivo

[jkeny]

Hello jkeny,

If I could pitch in here as I have experience of both the Musiland 01US & Hiface units. I'm a tweaker so I bought these with the intention of getting the best sound out of them. Both use asynchronous USB which attracted me.

First, I bought the Musiland & was impressed with the stock sound but then I heard what a difference in SQ I got by supplying an external 5V supply instead of USB 5V. This set me on a path of PS mods - I'll provide links if anyone is interested. The result was a transformation.

BUT, I knew the limitation of the Musiland DAC was the audio clock generation (the various audio clocks are synthesised from one 24MHz clock, AFAIR) & I heard about the HiFace which had this problem addressed - it uses 2 physical low jitter clocks on-board. Stock, this sounded as good as the fully modded Musiland. When I modded the internal PS of the HiFace - it now soared in SQ - smooth & silky, like very good analogue with lots of detail

So, have you tried Monitor 02 US - this is the second version. I am wondering how it might compare with HiFace unit? Based on your post, HiFace is better out of box than Musiland 01US.

Ivo

The 02 US has an in-built switching supply which isolates the unit from the PC USB 5V supplies.

I modded my 01US which relied on USB power to totally operate off external supplies - the better the supply the better the sound. I settled on battery power as the cleanest. My LiFePo4 batteries should beat, hands down, the switching supplies within the 02 US

The stock Hiface sounded about as good as I remember the fully modded 01US to be - I didn't have a working Musiland to do an A/B compare so I might be wrong here but that's my memory of it.

When I moddded my Hiface I never even considered how it compared to the Musiland the sonic gap was such a chasm

[Flecko]

Thanks for the information. it is a pitty the m2tech is not relay designed to be a highend converter and still need mods. But it seems worth a try if not something better will show up.

A highend converter is/will be available BUT do you want to spend thousands of dollars - look to dCS, Wavelength, Empirical Audio - they all have USB products at these prices?

Of course I don't want to pay very much money on this extrem expensive stuff from dCS, wavelength etc... I don't know what a usb2-spif converter made by them costs but I guess it costs to much. The point is, that i don't want to tweak around a lot. I've been doing this for a long time and it is very time consuming. I like something that I just can use. Such things needn't to be expensive. There are good things on the market. They cost nearly nothing and are sounding very well. Like my Jungson JA-99C power amp. Costs 400€ and sounds like 4000€.

[Flecko]

Another thing. I have looked around and found there are media harddrives on the market, which can give a spdif signal from musicfiles stored on harddrive. This could be a solution for the PC playback problem because you don't need a pc to play the files. Does somebody know a good product? Has anybody made experiences and compared to pc and CDP playback?

[jkeny]

Another thing. I have looked around and found there are media harddrives on the market, which can give a spdif signal from musicfiles stored on harddrive. This could be a solution for the PC playback problem because you don't need a pc to play the files. Does somebody know a good product? Has anybody made experiences and compared to pc and CDP playback?

Squeezebox receiver without the controller & using iPod Touch as remote control (iPeng software)

[julcat2810]

These is a new option it's based on the musiland with power supply and independent clock it even has a tube gain for the spdif in the max version, looks very interesting

http://www.diyhifisupply.com/catalog/105

[jkeny]

These is a new option it's based on the musiland with power supply and independent clock it even has a tube gain for the spdif in the max version, looks very interesting

Yes, it's an improvement BUT the big issue with the Musiland is the clock - it uses a 24MHz crystal from which the audio clocks needed are synthesised - This is a formula for adding jitter & this is heard when compared against the HiFace which uses two low jitter clocks directly on the output which results in much lower jitter as there is no synthesis needed.

The modifications of the DiYhifisupply introduce a low jitter 24MHz clock in place of the 24MHz crystal BUT it still needs to be synthesised into the required audio clocks - not the best idea in the world - unfortunately this is the Musiland's weakness - if the clocks were handled as in the HiFace it may sound even better than the HiFace, who knows?

[Flecko]

Squeezebox receiver without the controller & using iPod Touch as remote control (iPeng software)Happy

this is not what i am looking for. I like somthing that can read files from a harddrive and convert it to spdif, without using a pc or any kind of windows ce in the unit itself.

[jkeny]

Squeezebox receiver without the controller & using iPod Touch as remote control (iPeng software)Happy

this is not what i am looking for. I like somthing that can read files from a harddrive and convert it to spdif, without using a pc or any kind of windows ce in the unit itself.

What do you think the squeezebox is - there's no PC in there - it's a network device that converts files (stored on a remote PC Linux or Win server) delivered over the ethernet to SPDIF!

[PeterSt]

there's no PC in there

I wouldn't be too sure about that !
Could be a small Linux implementation up to an Atom/Vista and worse ...

[jkeny]

It's a Linux implementation on a processor but so is a media tank device (except they have a cr*p GUI for music & are built for video mainly, whereas a squeezebox is focused on audio only) - it's hard to get away from needing some form of processing power. What I think is important for optimal sound is as small a hardware footprint as possible with as minimal a processing activity as possible. The PC, as a general purpose machine, just does not fulfill these criteria, hence all the machinations to try to achieve a smaller processing footprint. I'm sure you have your own view into all this  

[Flecko]

What do you think the squeezebox is - there's no PC in there - it's a network device that converts files (stored on a remote PC Linux or Win server) delivered over the ethernet to SPDIF!

Hmm, ok. But I still need a PC to manage the playback or can I just plug the hard drive and listen? Did you compared the soundquality of the spdif out with other devices?

I am looking for something like this:
http://www.pixelmagicsystems.com/products/media_players/hd_mediabox.htm
but don't know if it is the best system available.

[jkeny]

What do you think the squeezebox is - there's no PC in there - it's a network device that converts files (stored on a remote PC Linux or Win server) delivered over the ethernet to SPDIF!

Hmm, ok. But I still need a PC to manage the playback or can I just plug the hard drive and listen? Did you compared the soundquality of the spdif out with other devices?

The up-coming Squeezebox touch is such a device - attach an external drive & you can playback music via SPDIF out to DAC,etc. SPDIF is supposed to be very good according to Beta testers. It has a processor on the PCB & runs Linux - so does any Media Tank or device that handles media

[Flecko]

The up-coming Squeezebox touch is such a device - attach an external drive & you can playback music via SPDIF out to DAC,etc. SPDIF is supposed to be very good according to Beta testers. It has a processor on the PCB & runs Linux - so does any Media Tank or device that handles media Happy

That might be just what I am looking for. If the spdif signal is better than with my pc-usb-spdif solutiont, I could realy think of buying it. Probably I can tweak it a little bit with better oscilator etc.. damn, I must always think of something like this...
thanks for the hint!

[ivo]

It is already done:

http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/Squeezebox/squeezebox.html

It is not about Touch model, but who cares....

The only problem I see is that there is no way 16/44 is upsampled, so such good thing as Arc Pred is not possible there. Whatever sound comes out of its SPDIF - it will not be as juiceful as if used XX I guess. Opinions?

Ivo

[jkeny]

It is already done:

http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/Squeezebox/squeezebox.html

It is not about Touch model, but who cares....

Agreed, the SB receiver is an excellent platform for this BUT it does require a server whereas the Touch acts as it's own server. The Touch will also operated at 24/96

The only problem I see is that there is no way 16/44 is upsampled, so such good thing as Arc Pred is not possible there. Whatever sound comes out of its SPDIF - it will not be as juiceful as if used XX I guess. Opinions?

Ivo

[Flecko]

It is already done:

http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/Squeezebox/squeezebox.html

It is not about Touch model, but who cares...

I just found it on my own Very nice what he says. But I have not the best experinces relying on his findings. But if he is right about the soundquality then I gues even xx highend with good usb-spdif out will be not as good. In my ears a CD transport still has some advantages (not over all, but I don't have the very best) over pc-playback in soundquality to my ears. So if squeezbox is better than any CD-Transport it must be better than xx-highend.  But I gues this must be tried to find out.

[jkeny]

It is already done:

http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/Squeezebox/squeezebox.html

It is not about Touch model, but who cares...

I just found it on my own Very nice what he says. But I have not the best experinces relying on his findings. But if he is right about the soundquality than I gues even xx highend with good usb-spdif out will be not as good. In my ears a CD transport still has some advantages (not over all, but I don't have the very best) over pc-playback in soundquality to my ears. So if squeezbox is better than any CD-Transport it must be better than xx-highend.  But I gues this must be tried to find out.

If you are a DIY type ( & it sounds like you are) there is a whole thread devoted to modding this unit on the slimdevices forum - I contributed myself to it - http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=55044

A lot of activity near the end of that thread.

[Flecko]

If you are a DIY type ( & it sounds like you are) there is a whole thread devoted to modding this unit on the slimdevices forum - I contributed myself to it - http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=55044

A lot of activity near the end of that thread.

I have done a lot DIY. Also electronics but I am care full with this. At the end it has to work everyday without bugs etc. I had a selfmade DAC with accupacks and sold it because of the recharging problem. Sound was great.
What is your opinion on the soundquality of the squeezbox compared to the xx-hiface combi?

[jkeny]

If you are a DIY type ( & it sounds like you are) there is a whole thread devoted to modding this unit on the slimdevices forum - I contributed myself to it - http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=55044

A lot of activity near the end of that thread.

I have done a lot DIY. Also electronics but I am care full with this. At the end it has to work everyday without bugs etc. I had a selfmade DAC with accupacks and sold it because of the recharging problem. Sound was great.
What is your opinion on the soundquality of the squeezbox compared to the xx-hiface combi?

I hope Peter is OK with the direction of this thread ?
I can't say as I had a mishap with my SBR & it has been out of commission but I would be very happy if it matched the sound of my modded Hiface & there is probably no reason why it shouldn't but it's all about the implementation.

[Flecko]

I just read something about digital (spdif) output from Network players. Sound quality ranking seems to be (worst to best): Squeezbox Duet,SonoZP90,T+A MP, Linn Sneaky DS. So, it is getting expensive again. Since I refuse to modify stuff by myself, I think about the Legato from ART http://www.analogresearch-technology.net/LEGATO.html It should be one of the best usb-spdif converters. Costs are 500€, so it costs al lot more than a HiFace. Some guy compared a Hiface against a Legato. There is no big difference. Bass seemed to be better with legato. But you never know...for now I still don't know what to do. But the Network player idea is not so interesting anymore.
If I had the money I would probably buy a Linn Akkurate DS. But 5000€ for Hifi-gear that is looking like a Mainboard with switching PS??? I rather stay with big Transformers and big Caps