Schiit Owners Unite - Page 96

Quote:

Originally Posted by eddiek997 

Jitter us the enemy. Not so much emi when using optical.
USB on asynchronous dac will sound better.

To each their own.

I prefer optical.  I'm running at 96kHz and I don't have a jitter issue.

I had a DM+ with USB2 async and the interface was fragile.

I think it depends on the quality of the clocks in the devices.

Well then, how about your USB? Is it fully buzzword compliant? 24/192? Async?
It is absolutely buzzword compliant! Not only is it USB async, but it’s USB 2.0 async that’ll do up to 24 bits/192 kHz sampling rates. Yes. USB 2.0. Not antique 1.1. It works without drivers on Mac and we provide drivers for Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP. It’s a good-sounding, reliable, solid implementation of USB. But that’s like saying, “Well, its a very nice meal, given that the chef could only work with McDonald’s hamburgers.”*

Wait. Are you saying USB is crap?
We’re saying we put a ton of time into our USB implementation, but, to our ears, USB still doesn’t quite offer the performance of SPDIF. And we can even get into shades of gray on SPDIF too: consider Mike Moffat’s AT&T ST-optical interfaces and Sumo’s Axiom/Theorem transport and D/A, which had a separate low-jitter master clock connection from the transport.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OICWUTUDIDTHAR 

Is using the onboard optical output off of a desktop motherboard (some realktek chip) > bifrost > amp better then going Usb from computer>bifrost>amp sound quality wise?

Bottom line.  Try both.

I ordered both of my Bifrost's w/o USB and I'm very happy.

I also prefer optical and feel USB needs a good converter to sound good.

Just looked at the Realtech chip.

It sounds great.  

It speaks to my comments about clocks.

The Realteck chipset is specifically for clocking audio.  Use it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgjy 

The issue with using optical out on Macs is the sound still goes through the sound card first.  USB bypasses that giving a more direct line to the external DAC.

I don't have any issues using optical out on my Mac.  It works great.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hodgjy 

The issue with using optical out on Macs is the sound still goes through the sound card first.  USB bypasses that giving a more direct line to the external DAC.

Really?...

That's the whole thing with this hobby of ours... most of the time that which is deemed 'better' is the subjective opinion of another person.

In my experience, any time I can bypass the internal workings/extra processing of the circuitry the better it will sound. USB bypasses all of that and, with the correct sync capabilities will affect (for better or worse) the intended signal less.

Again, subjective logic and opinion..... and the only way to find out is to listen with your own ears.

Don't forget to sit back and listen. Turn off the forum. Turn off the news. Turn off the world, just sit back, listen and enjoy :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by eddiek997 

That's the whole thing with this hobby of ours... most of the time that which is deemed 'better' is the subjective opinion of another person.

 

In my experience, any time I can bypass the internal workings/extra processing of the circuitry the better it will sound. USB bypasses all of that and, with the correct sync capabilities will affect (for better or worse) the intended signal less.

 

Again, subjective logic and opinion..... and the only way to find out is to listen with your own ears.

 

Don't forget to sit back and listen. Turn off the forum. Turn off the news. Turn off the world, just sit back, listen and enjoy :)

+1

(the music part)

What I don't understand is using optical the sound goes through the soundcard first on a mac.

Which implies a more degraded sound than directly through USB.

I do understand that toslink is the direct signal from the soundcard, however the use with a ext DAC results in a a reclock.

Which kind of negates the whole optical goes through soundcard first compard to USB. At least that's how I understand it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by paradoxper 

What I don't understand is using optical the sound goes through the soundcard first on a mac.

Which implies a more degraded sound than directly through USB.

 

I do understand that toslink is the direct signal from the soundcard, however the use with a ext DAC results in a a reclock.

Which kind of negates the whole optical goes through soundcard first compard to USB. At least that's how I understand it.

The way I understand it is that the DAC (asynchronous) takes charge of the communications between the Dac and the Processor minimizing or eliminating jitter. Resulting in the purest transfer of the digital signal from stored bits to the chip thats going to convert those bits to analog.

Toslink is merely the means of transporting the digital bits from soundcard to Analog converter chip. Optical is light and not subject to ground noise but light can be affected by other interference.

HOWEVER, I am in no way qualified to argue the point against Jason or Mr Moffatt. They know better than me.

Particle Physics gives me a Hadron.

Just saying

Jitter almost ruined me for hp's completely. I fought with it for months and then finally decided to bite the bullet and buy the non-usb bifrost and the jitter was gone.