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AGD digital interface/M2tech hiFace worth the money compared to a simple solution like this..

post #1 of 5
2/16/11 at 9:12pm
Thread Starter 

alright guys let me know what you think. im probs gonna go ahead and order a nfb-11 but now theyre without usb. now from what i understand usb isnt the best way to get a digital input to your dac anyway. would a simple $15 piece like this http://www.excaliberpc.com/551265/asus-motherboard-accessories-spdif-out.html cause quality to suffer at all compared to the latter mentioned in title? my logic is a digital signal is digital. just 1's and 0's till it hits the dac. so hooking an inexpensive optical/coax out from my desktop could be a lot cheaper than a digital interface or Hiface. with same results? cause i believe optical does support 192 khz

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post #2 of 5
2/17/11 at 1:30am
Quote:
now from what i understand usb isnt the best way to get a digital input to your dac anyway.

 

Not exactly. A properly implemented solution (Asynch. and galvanically isolated) is, in my experience, the best way to output signal from a computer.

 

Quote:
would a simple $15 piece like this http://www.excaliberpc.com/551265/asus-motherboard-accessories-spdif-out.html cause quality to suffer at all compared to the latter mentioned in title?

The Assus product you've linked is a motherboard accessory, useful if you need extra SPDIF connections, beside the one present on the motherboard itself. If you already have the connector, that break-out board is pointless.

Motherboards are known to output low quality, high jitter SPDIF out. Some are better than others, but none of them are particularly praised by the audiophile community.

Most people prefer to output SPDIF via a high quality sound card which leaves the signal more intact and has less jitter.

 

And to answer the 2nd part of your question I will tell you this:

I get noticeably poorer sound quality from SPDIF out from both my motherboard (a higher end Gigabyte) and soundcard (Audiotrack HD2 Advance) compared to my M2Tech HiFace.

Compared to the USB input of my A-gd DAC19 (which isn't so well implemented, but still usable), the soundcard is a bit better.

 

Quote:
my logic is a digital signal is digital. just 1's and 0's till it hits the dac.

This is not accurate and you should read a bit more on the subject (it's been discussed many times on head-fi as well).

Long story short: when you output digital signal from a PC you don't always get the right 0's and 1's . Often times the signal gets processed by the OS or your soundcard (resampling all 44.1Khz signal to 48KHz ). Also you never get the 0 and 1 at exactly the right time, because of jitter. This is a big problem for SPDIF and less of a problem for USB (being a different format).

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post #3 of 5
2/17/11 at 8:51am
Thread Starter 
Wow thanks so much ill be sure to do more research. How noticeable is the difference from your hiface to the usb input on your dac?
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post #4 of 5
2/17/11 at 10:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by hello im sean View Post

Wow thanks so much ill be sure to do more research. How noticeable is the difference from your hiface to the usb input on your dac?


 Extremely noticeable...... I ordered a Digital Interface from Audio GD that I should get next week and will compare it with my M2tech.... but just now I might tell you it's night and day between the USB input and the M2Tech USB to SPDIF converter....

 

Denys

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post #5 of 5
2/17/11 at 10:24am
Thread Starter 
Wow.. what file types are you using? 24 bit 96khz and above? Makes me think this is worth getting now
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