Audio-gd Digital Interface - Page 42

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/01/playing-flac-files-in-media-center.html

I found a link on playing flac in windows media player. I never tried to play flac on it before since I had foobar and tried J River Media 15 recently, and WMP really didn't play flacs so I found and tried this tutorial. Now flacs play in WMP.

WMP spdif is not bit-perfect without using some bit-perfect software. There is an ASIO plug-in for WMP. It is annoying to set up and use, and has interesting bugs.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/asiowmpplg/

Nevermind

I thought you said you didn't have bit-perfect in WMP, my bad.

Remember the days before USB....when there was only SPDIF [coax or toslink] and AES/EBU digital connections.

People there were people in every camp, toslink was hailed because of the lack of an electrical connection and all its faults.  Back then the Van Den Hul Optocoupler was THE way to go for all things digital.

Some people heard better sound via coax and still others swore by a balanced connection like the pro's.  Where was jitter back then???

Now inter Firewire and USB, the pro's probably use Firewire more than USB and the "Audiophile" community has adopted USB as THE method of digital transfer.  Of course being an Audiophile the only obvious choice has to be something that is flawed from the start and lends itself to endless tweaks and fixes to make it perfect.  How did USB, something meant for printers and keyboards end up being so important to audio?

Now you need to De-couple the USB with a added device which works best when powered with pure clean regulated DC, Asynch the data between the source and the DAC with another device, and then convert the USB to SPDIF before you can even get a signal worth listening too.  Something is wrong with this picture.  Is the Audiophile community the victim of a Marketing experiment?

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

 

Originally Posted by Dynobot 

Wow....0.00 is low.

 

As always how does that relate to human hearing, even the Super hearing capabilities of Audiophiles I don't know....

 

 

I made a thread about it a while back: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/496161/

 

and the TREAD was measured at 0.060 mVRMS.

Originally Posted by Dynobot 

 

toslink was hailed because of the lack of an electrical connection and all its faults.  Back then the Van Den Hul Optocoupler was THE way to go for all things digital.

 

Some people heard better sound via coax and still others swore by a balanced connection like the pro's.  Where was jitter back then???

 

Now inter Firewire and USB, the pro's probably use Firewire more than USB and the "Audiophile" community has adopted USB as THE method of digital transfer.  Of course being an Audiophile the only obvious choice has to be something that is flawed from the start and lends itself to endless tweaks and fixes to make it perfect.  How did USB, something meant for printers and keyboards end up being so important to audio?

Well, the jitter issue is well explained on that page: http://www.bursonaudio.com/burson_clock.htm

"Jitter Error has only been identified as a deficiency in the last couple of years"

And USB audio w/o ADUM4160 is not worth a dime IMO..None of what it does is possible via firewire, hence the possibility of groundloops..I swear this guy must be on Prozac as I'm typing this: http://www.mlancentral.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=6&Board=mLAN&Number=440443&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/power-supplies/101204-building-psu-external-firewire-soundcard.html

"The firewire optical isolator is basically optical isolation for firewire device. So there is no ground loop flowing between your soundcard and the PC (PC ground is extremely dirty)."

Isolating Firewire costs a hell lof money, USB has caught up w/ coax(using pulse transformers) now that ADUM4160 is out. WM8804 is the icing on the cake to overcome the sloppy 12MHz masterclock of the Tenor chip...but I understand the DSP in the A-GD unit should also lower jitter.

Geeezzzzzz, my head in spinning!

Well I bought a ADum thingy today as well as that powersupply.  Once it gets here I will compare.

I don't have any DI, Highface, etc so I will just being going USB straight to the DAC.

Just for kicks I think I will connect my glass toslink as well.

Usually I like coax best...

I also bought one of these things so I can plug the ADuM right in my DAC

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

 

Well, the jitter issue is well explained on that page: http://www.bursonaudio.com/burson_clock.htm

 

"Jitter Error has only been identified as a deficiency in the last couple of years"

 

This is totally wrong. Jitter is not something new. People have known and talked about jitter for a couple of decades.

As an example, Stereophile wrote a pretty decent article about jitter on ... 1992! Here is the link: http://www.stereophile.com/reference/193jitter/

Stereophile has also measured jitter on CD transports on 1993. See the article here: http://www.stereophile.com/features/368/

The search only took me less than a minute. I am pretty sure one can find out even older articles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dynobot 

Geeezzzzzz, my head in spinning!

 

 

Well I bought a ADum thingy today as well as that powersupply.  Once it gets here I will compare.

 

I don't have any DI, Highface, etc so I will just being going USB straight to the DAC.

 

Just for kicks I think I will connect my glass toslink as well.

 

Usually I like coax best...

 

I also bought one of these things so I can plug the ADuM right in my DAC

 

Hi Dynobot,

Word of advice: I wouldn't personally base any purchase decision on Leeperry's comments. A few months ago he was trolling all over the place saying that HIS specific glass toslink cable was the best possible digital connection ever. He was saying that glass optical was better than coax. Now that he tried a cheap coax cable he is saying all over the place that coax is better than glass toslink.

Also, now that he tried his new toy: the ADUM, he is saying that everything is worthless except what is he is using. The same goes for opamps... the only opamps worth listening to are HIS AD797BRZ and LT1028ACN8. (You can click on his profile and check his latest posts: he repeats the same things over and over).

Of course this could be amusing to read if you know the guy. But when reading his very raving comments about his last new toy, I encourage you to put things into perspective.

Since this thread is about the Digital Interface I will stop here. I hope that Leeperry can stop derailing this thread (in purpose).

Originally Posted by Dynobot 

Geeezzzzzz, my head in spinning!

  

Well I bought a ADum thingy today as well as that powersupply.  Once it gets here I will compare.

 

I don't have any DI, Highface

like this you mean?

ADUM4160 doesn't work on the Hiface, major deal breaker for me ^^

Originally Posted by Audio Bling 

USB polling tweak: http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=78994

Did you try this tweak? any audible improvement?

2 things don't match up for me:

1)the m$ paper says it's for WinME and W2K

2)USB Prober(on Mac), shows that most USB audio interfaces force the polling rate to its highest granularity(1 ms): http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Asynchronicity-USB-Audio-Primer

There's a well known hack on windows which is to hexedit USBPort.sys to force it to 1ms permanently...some mice don't have caps and can reach 1Mhz instead of the default 125Hz.

I've installed a modified 1ms USBPort.sys but couldn't hear any difference on the Tenor chip...grokit tried USB Prober on his Tenor unit, but it didn't say the polling rate...yet you can rest assured that it's being forced to 1ms. I really don't think you wanna add latency on purpose, but this registry entry prolly doesn't do anything on USB audio devices. I suspect the Tenor chip wouldn't work at all at 5ms.

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry 

Did you try this tweak? any audible improvement?

 

2 things don't match up for me:

 

[..]

Thanks for your thoughts.. I suggest that we take this particular discussion over to the AA thread. That way I won't feel guilty that I have derailed this thread. But to answer your question: Yes I have tried this tweak and believe that it works. Not only that but the difference is not small. Also, it is so easy to do and reverse. I recommend people give it a try (and leave their comments over on AA). There is nothing to lose.

Also, this discussion about the benefits of ADUM has been done over on AA many moons ago. You guys need to get out more!

Quote:

Originally Posted by slim.a 

I really think Kingwa should make a higher end usb converter to match his mid-level and higher end DACs. Maybe he prefers to wait until he can makes things as good as the CD-7 ... who knows.

x2

Indeed, I would like to see Kingwa build a world-beater. But I think there is some competition out there. Anyone have some experience of the Legato?

Is jitter and phase noise an issue at the analog stage of the DAC and all the way to your headphone or can everything be corrected as it enters the DAC in the digital section?

Yes, please take the discussion of this USB chip to its own thread, unless you have something interesting to report regarding the DI with it.

The DI doesn't work directly out of my MacBook Pro's USB ports, which is annoying.  I wanted to find out if the USB ports in my hub resulted in a difference to the built-in ones. 

Though I need more gear like I need a hole in the head, I have a Cambridge 840C here now, the DAC of which I'm going to see if it's affected by the DI or not.