triplefun said:

@wwmhf

How are you processing the music? Is it flac or larger? Mp3 does not sound all that great on a high end system!
Have you tried foobar, jriver or hqplayer for dynamic up sampling to dsd128?
Better still, if your PC is a dedicated music player have you looked at daphile - poor mans jplay?
Are you interconnecting cables short and of middle to high quality?
If you want more then explore some of the mods - no transformer bolts, twisted mains etc ...

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Thanks for your suggestions. 
 
My music are mostly my CD copied to a hardrive in wav format. I rarely listen to MP3.
I was quite interested in upsampling some time ago. I used the SoX upsampler in foobar for a while and I tried the upsampler in jriver briefly. Before this year, only one of my DACs was capable up to 192. So I was not very much impressed by upsampling in my very limited explorations. Your suggestions and my new toys motivate me to explore more. That hqplayer seems to be an attractive starter. 
 
The daphile program is interesting to me because I have been using a Squeezebox Touch for years. I need more time to explore it. 
 
My interconnecting cables are mostly made by myself and I am confident they can stand against good cables in the market. USB cable is a different story. I do not know how to make good ones yet so I just use seemly decent ones.
 
I will explore mods on X20 later. Looking back, I modded every single dac I used (AUDIO ALCHEMY DDEs, MSB Link DAC I, II, III, Ack! Dack! 1.2, 2.0 ...), so I am sure I will try something to mod X20 if I decide to keep it. 

ginetto61 said:

   
Hi i would study about the different ways to realize the usb connection. 

I would also evaluate the possibility to enter spdif or AES/EBU in the X20 

At least it is what i will be doing asa i will receive my X20U for sure.
I have bought one also fo myself.

Regards, bg

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My initial experience (since last evening) is that the USB interface on X20U is quite good. I did not even have to install the driver coming with X20, my compute recognizes X20 through the XMOS driver I have been using for the USB interfaces Gustard U12 and Breeze. I will try to put these usb interfaces in between PC and X20U to see if there will be any improvements.   

My initial experience (since last evening) is that the USB interface on X20U is quite good.

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I did not even have to install the driver coming with X20, my compute recognizes X20 through the XMOS driver I have been using for the USB interfaces Gustard U12 and Breeze.

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Hi ! this is great because i have already the same drivers installed.  I have also the U12 here.
I have received just now the confirmation of the arrival of the unit at DHL office.
On Monday i will go and get the dac at the local deposit. thanks a lot again for the welcome information.

 I will try to put these usb interfaces in between PC and X20U to see if there will be any improvements. 

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It is also what i intend do as well.
However i see also that you have a long story of dacs ... great dacs actually

AUDIO ALCHEMY DDEs, MSB Link DAC I, II, III, Ack! Dack! 1.2, 2.0 ...

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please write a review with your findings
Regards,  gino

Just to share with you that the USB driver shipped to me together with the X20U a name as follows:
 
XMOS-Stereo-USB-Audio-Class2-Driver-3033_v3.20.0
 
which I assume is version 3.20

Any suggestions for the gain setting: 0 or +6 on X20U? 

IME it's loud enough with the +0dB gain setting.
 
I'd love to hear your modding experiences with this DAC @wwmhf ! I'll fire up my soldering iron in two weeks time. So i can compare the before situation with the mods.
 
Anybody had problems with the AC filters and power button removed? 
 
Could i damage the DAC by connecting it directly to AC mains?
 
I'd leave the fuse in place to be safe when applying these mods.

simonbromley said:

 
Just out of interest, I downloaded the DIYINHK driver, but it would simply NOT see my X20. Maybe I did something wrong, but when I reloaded the 3.2 evaluation driver everything worked fine again. So this functionality may be very system dependent.
 

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I installed the "DIYINHK USB Audio Driver v3.34", and it does support native DSD256 on X20U.
 
This is how I installed it:
 
1. uninstall existing xmos driver.
2. "buy" the DIYINHK driver for $0 and unrar it. run the setup.exe from the unzipped folder.
3. "next" all the way till it says driver is installed, when prompted with message about cannot find digital signature, click install anyway.
4. unplug the X20U USB from computer and re-plug it in. Windows will pop "installing drivers".
5. The driver install will probably fail here. Most likely it is due to the absence of digital signature of the DIY driver, even though we clicked install anyway in step 3.
6. go to "control panal" -> "device manager", under the "Sound, video and game controller" menu, you should notice a "xCORE" device with exclamation sign on it.
7. right click on the "xCORE" device, and click "update Driver Software...", then choose "Browse my computer for driver software", give the folder "C:\Program Files\DIYINHK\TUSBAudio_Driver", click next, then it should be able to find "XMOS XS1-U8 MFA" device, install it.
8. At this point Windows will probably complaint again about digital signature, ignore the warnings, and install the driver.
 
In my case, after these steps, a "XMOS XS1-U8 MFA" device replaced the exclamation "xCORE" device, it also appeared in my playback devices. All seem fine, despite a few warnings given by Windows about requiring all drivers to have digital signatures. Set the "XMOS XS1-U8 MFA" as the default playback device.
 
In foobar, In the foo_dsd_asio setup, choose the "DIYINHK TUSBAudeo ASIO Driver" as the ASIO driver, and use "ASIO Native" as the DSD playback method. Now play a DSD256 file, I can see DSD256 displayed on X20U, so I assume it is working.
 
I haven't played with it too much yet, so I cannot comment on its quality/stability. One interesting behavior I noticed, if foobar is playing DSD file, then "XMOS XS1-U8 MFA" device disappears from the playback devices. Not sure if it is a feature or bug. Strange looking but it doesn't affect playback, and the device will reappear when the PCM signal is played.
 
Hope it helps.

@bitcars Thank you for the write up.  I downloaded the driver but had not installed yet based on Simons report.  Think I will now.  I'll report on results.

quadman said:

  @bitcars Thank you for the write up.  I downloaded the driver but had not installed yet based on Simons report.  Think I will now.  I'll report on results.

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Well after some trial and error.  I turned off digital signing in win 10 and loaded the driver I checked device manager and no yellow warning, clicked properties and it was 3.34. I opened Roon and HQPlayer and set the sample rate to DSD256.  Hit play had a few can't connect to hqplayer messages and by closing and reopening got it to play music, the DAC showed DSD128, I opened task manager and CPU usage was around 25% (when I play DSD128 it is around 12%) so the computer was up sampling to DSD256 but the dac was only seeing DSD128.  No matter how I adjusted settings in HQPlayer I could not get dac to see DSD256.  I do have the xmos evaluation driver which plays for 60 minutes then beeps, I will try that this weekend and hope for 256.
 
HQPlayer does not have a ASIO Native setting like foobar.

GOT IT!!      For HQPlayer in settings if you have a native DSD ASIO driver and apparently the DIYinHK 3.34 driver is; under SDM pack you select none and viola X20u showed DSD256 on the display and CPU usage is in the low 20's.  Time to listen.  Thank you @bitcars

quadman said:

  GOT IT!! 

     For HQPlayer in settings if you have a native DSD ASIO driver and apparently the DIYinHK 3.34 driver is; under SDM pack you select none and viola X20u showed DSD256 on the display and CPU usage is in the low 20's.  Time to listen.  Thank you @bitcars

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You are most welcome sir. From this experience, looks like the trick for the DIYINHK driver is bypassing the digital signing, win7 and win10.
 
Could you please share some of your listening results as well? It seems your setup and mods could push your X20u to reveal much more detail. For my stock X20u with no power filter, plus my <15KHz ears, the sound difference of the DSD256 is very subtle, if there is any at all. I admit it might be beyond my ability to appreciate. Although, there was a short moment in my listening when I felt a slightly less harshness than I usually remembered, so maybe it is doing something.

Any DAC on DAC comparisons, not using the built-in head.amp but to a balanced external head.amp, of the Gustard X20U and the Yulong Sabre DA8?

tom-s said:

  IME it's loud enough with the +0dB gain setting.
 
I'd love to hear your modding experiences with this DAC @wwmhf ! I'll fire up my soldering iron in two weeks time. So i can compare the before situation with the mods.
 
Anybody had problems with the AC filters and power button removed? 
 
Could i damage the DAC by connecting it directly to AC mains?
 
I'd leave the fuse in place to be safe when applying these mods.

Click to expand...

I have now taken out of the circuit (not removed) the ac filtering and on/off switch and have had zero problems.  Remember the only way to turn the unit off now is to unplug it and since the clocks like power and the X20 does not have a standby mode it is a good idea to leave it on all the time.  Plenty of line level SS items have the transformers wired directly to the AC in.  I suggest as a starting point to do the full 7 steps of the AC mod as Ric explains on his site tweakaudio.com, I also damped most of the larger caps with ear sd40al and that was noticeable as well.
 
Since it fits here I'll update my progress on my friends X20u.  I have completed the full AC mod and damped the bigger caps with the ear material.  I know most of you are uncomfortable with wrapping a fuse in copper so buy a audiophile fuse instead.  With these mods I would say the dac is 85% of the way to a full L1 modded dac.  The main differences being a bit less transparency and size of the sound stage also performers are not as solidly located in this stage as full L1.  Now this would not be noticeable to you until you heard a full L1 then you would begin to understand what i am saying.  If you just listened to the full ac mod with damping you would not say to yourself I wish I had more transparency and a bigger stage.  As usual you do not know what is missing until you hear it.  Friday I will remove the diodes on his output board and replace with Ric's recommendation and then probably Sunday I will solder in my custom made coax cable.  Then I only need the Quantum chips to get to Ric's full level 1 mod (they are ordered, just waiting for them).  I will report after each mod.

bitcars said:

  You are most welcome sir. From this experience, looks like the trick for the DIYINHK driver is bypassing the digital signing, win7 and win10.
 
Could you please share some of your listening results as well? It seems your setup and mods could push your X20u to reveal much more detail. For my stock X20u with no power filter, plus my <15KHz ears, the sound difference of the DSD256 is very subtle, if there is any at all. I admit it might be beyond my ability to appreciate. Although, there was a short moment in my listening when I felt a slightly less harshness than I usually remembered, so maybe it is doing something.

Click to expand...

Listend to DSD256 for about 5 hours last night.  Not a night and day difference but what I would call a nice step forward.  I thought there was more detail, acoustic instruments had more air around them (piano boards held the sound longer, guitars showed more air inside).  The stage seemed a bit bigger, but that may have been related to more transparency and better defined images within that space.  I also think that the higher we up sample the more analog quality there is to the sound.  Digital artifacts begin to disappear and digital starts to show more of it's strengths a lower noise floor and a perceived greater dynamic envelope.  Massed strings sounded wonderful.  I like it a lot, but need more time comparing the two and would like just one dac to listen to.  As it is now I am trying to hear differences between my almost full L1 dac and my buddies partially moded dac.  Then another friend sent me his AQ Diamond USB cable to listen to while he is in Europe.  So a lot going on.  I like the progress tho.

quadman said:

 
Listend to DSD256 for about 5 hours last night.  Not a night and day difference but what I would call a nice step forward.  I thought there was more detail, acoustic instruments had more air around them (piano boards held the sound longer, guitars showed more air inside).  The stage seemed a bit bigger, but that may have been related to more transparency and better defined images within that space.  I also think that the higher we up sample the more analog quality there is to the sound.  Digital artifacts begin to disappear and digital starts to show more of it's strengths a lower noise floor and a perceived greater dynamic envelope.  Massed strings sounded wonderful.  I like it a lot, but need more time comparing the two and would like just one dac to listen to.  As it is now I am trying to hear differences between my almost full L1 dac and my buddies partially moded dac.  Then another friend sent me his AQ Diamond USB cable to listen to while he is in Europe.  So a lot going on.  I like the progress tho.

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Quadman, I participated in a 6 DAC comparison recently, carefully level matched, and aside from the AQUA LaScala being way out in front, the SPDIF cables made more difference than most of the other 5 DACs. The cables especially affected the soundstage width/depth, detail retrieval, but not much tonally. I'm sure the USB cables will have similar differences, so be sure to try as many as possible to find the most synergistic match for the X20u.