The discovery thread!
Nov 22, 2012 at 2:10 AM Post #4,966 of 100,254
Quote:
 
Slow down Ds !      ....I can hardly keep up !
tongue_smile.gif

 
Speaking of which, something I don't get, why do you say 'Happy turkey day' when obviously the turkeys are not going to be very happy ?
confused_face(1).gif


Oh that ghost humor, how i miss it. LoL They will be happy in my belly.
tongue_smile.gif

 
Nov 22, 2012 at 2:16 AM Post #4,967 of 100,254
Believe me I had no intention of buying a $200 Dac/amp and then packing it up the next day.. I was willing to give it a solid week or so but after hearing this $18 cheapo Ele dac. I knew I was not going to use the AUNE T1. I was looking for an upgrade to my Fire Phoenix and what I got was a downgrade in sound. It took all day yesterday and  today listening to it to realize this. The overall brightness to the sounds was a killer for me. Using warmer sounding cans it sounds great but using my open HD595 which does not bode well with brighter sounds. I couldn't keep that headphone on for longer than a track or 2 before I had to take it off or lower the volume to low levels.
 
So a lesson learned for me was. What good is a DAC/AMP if it looks like a million bucks but is too bright sounding to really enjoy. I will let the others enjoy their AUNE T1 on that thread but I much rather listen to the fantastic Ele Hi-Fi dac. Plus you guys should know by now. I am all about the sound and I don't care if it comes from a little generic metallic box...
 
You all are in for yet another really nice surprise. Lol.
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 2:34 AM Post #4,969 of 100,254
Quote:
Not proud of K-pop.
 
The only good thing about K-Pop is how much money it brings to my country...


Well there are lots of different variants/ genres within Kpop, like pop music everywhere it's a lot of garbage with some gems in it as well, but yeah the more mainstream popular forms are pretty generic/ bad.  But who likes pop music for music sake, it's for the hotties and amazing dancing esp. true in kpop.
biggrin.gif
How we ending up taking about Kpop again???
 
Oh right Ds,....... PSY is not even consider kpop per se, he's been around for a longgg minute and is a true artist unlike the corporate manufactured boy/ girl groups. So it's great to see him finally have so much success, even though I am not a fan of his music. It's so ironic cuz he wasn't even trying, and have already had wayyy more success than other Kpop acts that have tried to break out in the international/ American scene. LoL
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 2:40 AM Post #4,970 of 100,254
Quote:
 

I have it on 16 bit. It does not go to 24 bit but to be honest it won't make a lick of difference..The max is 16bit 48000 Hz Dvd quality.
 
 

the problem is, I have most of my classical/baroque and jazz in 24 bit 96khz or that strange SACD rips, you know, the ones with 1 bit but millions or herz :D so yeah, re-riping isn't an option :) would like something cheap that can support 24/196 recordings. as it is right now, my internal sound card can play exactly that and it sounds much better than everything I've heard (cleaner and more energetic than my clip, as little amount of hiss as the clip, much better soundstage than the zune hd and some sony cd player I used to have... so if the external DAC can not surpass that, then my wallet will be that much more happy :)
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 2:43 AM Post #4,971 of 100,254
I am getting the Hifimidey usb sabre dac soon which does support 24 bit. A bit higher end over this Ele dac so wait a bit until I get that one. I will tell you how that sounds.
 
You know what even though you have 24 bit files. I am willing to bet you it will still sound better on this Ele dac over your on board sound.  But for you it seems that Hifimidey dac is what your looking for.
 
I will let you know how the XB90 sounds with this little unit soon. I have a good feeling about it as the MH1C is out of this planet good with the ELe dac.
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 2:59 AM Post #4,973 of 100,254
Quote:
 
Cool thanks, WoW that cable was $100 MSRP. LoL It seems like the same type of USB cables printers uses to hook up to the PC, will that also work??? LMAO

 
Quote:
I suppose if you really want to go cheapo. Yes as long as it is a high speed 2.0 USB cable. yes you can hook up your printer cable to this ELE dac. But like I said. Getting a cheaper Audio usb is always a good idea for audio imo. At the bare minimum. Go to your local walmart and get a decent Belkin USB cable for $10.

I'm sorry, I truly am. I know I shouldn't bring this up again but as an engineer, who works with this stuff, I just can't let the misinformation that floats around about this stand. The following are two PMs I exchanged with another member. They center around the claims of this website http://www.wireworldcable.com/categories/usb_cables.html but after reading the description of the cable dsnuts linked too, the claims seem to be quite universal among these "special cables".
 
The very short of it: there is no such thing as an audio USB cable. There can and never will be. For the cable there is no difference to what kind of data you send through it. You can use any cable to connect your DAC, as long as it's conforming to the USB standard. Be it 3$, 20$ or 200$.
 
 
Though they look nice, they won't change anything in the sound coming out of your DAC.
 
The best comparison I can give you, is that of the external hard drive. Do you have any special cables for it? Probably not. Like most people, you use the one that came in the box with it. Yet you trust that cable to accurately transfer the data from your PC to the hard drive. Though I should mention, that there are some differences between the two processes in the protocols that are used. For a USB music transfer, there is a higher chance (that is still very, very, very small regardless of the cable used) that you have a loss of data during the transfer period. If that would happen, you would get small gaps/glitches in the sound that's coming out of your DAC. It can not however change the sound signature of your DAC in any way. That would mean that multiple chunks of data in succession have been manipulated in a way, that influences the decoding process of the DAC in way to change the frequency spectrum of the signal. The chance for that is so infinitesimal small, that I would deem it impossible in the real world.
 
 
Hi there,
 
yes I did read there description and here is my take on it: it shows the typical signs of snake oil. They use correct technical terms in a way, that is absolutely wrong. What do I mean with this? Let's have a look:
[Note: Since most of my points are quite technical in nature, I'll try to simplify them as best as I can. Some more intricate details might get lost that way, so keep that in mind.]
Quote:
There is a fundamental difference between the transfer of computer data and digital audio signals. Computers are able to transfer digital data without loss, because the data moves in the robust form of blocks, which do not depend on specific timing between the sending and receiving devices. However, digital audio signals are continuous streams of data, which are quite fragile, since the digital processor must remain perfectly locked onto the timing of the signal to avoid data losses.

In essence this is the same what I talked about in my last response. It's technical correct (in a way at least... that part about "fragile digital audio signals" is more meant to evoke emotions than anything else) but the first paragraph is just the lead in for the next part.
Quote:
The Limitations of digital audio processors and cables create timing errors known as jitter, which remove portions of the audio signal and replace them with noise and distortion.

Now we start to leave the realm of technical correctness and enter the world of hogwash. Since they concentrate on "jitter", let's first talk about that. Yes, jitter is a real world effect in digital signals. It describes the offset between a data signal and the related clock signal. The clock is used to determine when to sample the data line(s) to see what value is currently on them (a 1 or a 0). If the shift is large enough, the receiver might not sample the intended signal and thus receive a bit error. This predominately happens in systems, where the clock signal is transmitted between the sender and the receiver via a separate clock line. Having a bad cable/connection in this kind of situation can lead to the clock signal and the data signal running out of sync on the way to the sender. To mitigate that, USB doesn't use this kind of clock distribution. Instead the receiver extracts the clock from the data signals it gets from the sender. This is done in a synchronization phase before the actual data transmission begins. Using this technology, jitter can only come into play when the sender or the receiver run into some kind of problem. The cable has no effect whatsoever on this.
Quote:
Cables tend to round off the square waveforms of the signal, making them less clear to the processor, thus increasing jitter. This rounding effect varies greatly among cables and a truly superior digital audio cable can make great improvements in sound quality.

Well that gave me a good chuckle... before I had to cringe at how dumb this actually is. Most people tend to think that because digital signals are represented as a square waveform, they really are that square. In fact, they are not. Or as one of my professors put it "in the end, even the digital age is analog". The following picture represents something called the eye of a signal:

(Source: http://ics.nxp.com/products/nx/usb.switches/)
You get these by overlaying multiple signal samples and as you can see, there is no square wave to be found. Digital signals still have to conform to certain physical aspects of the analog world and thus you can't make a signal jump from one voltage level (which these graphs represent btw.) to another without some rise time in between.
To accompany for the many real world factors, that influence the signals in the real world, standards include minimum/maximum ratings for certain aspects of the signal. These include things like voltage levels, rise/sink times, over/undershooting (the ripples you can see in the picture above) and many more. If you factor all these things together, you get the hexagon you can see above. As long as the signal stays out of that zone, it's considered good and the receiver can reconstruct the intended value. As you can see, there is a lot of space around that hexagon. This means that the USB standard includes quite a large buffer for errors on the signal transmission (like any good engineer would
wink.gif
).
 
Oh man, that got longer (and a bit more technical) than I expected... I hope you're still with me
redface.gif

 
As a closing argument I want to stress again, that even if their cables lead to a better signal on the receiver side, that will not improve the resulting audio signal. As long as the ones and zeros arrive in the intended order, you get the same sound. The result coming out of the analog side of the DAC is absolutely unrelated to the sharpness of the signal on the digital side (as long as it conforms to the rules of the standard).
 
And to that forum link you provided: a little part of me died when I read this post there.
 
Quote:
http://www.audioaficionado.org/wireworld-cables/9683-wireworld-usb-anyone-3.html#post258174
i know most of you use a usb cable from the dac the laptap computer ? correct ?
i would like to share something that i iscovered a few weeks ago & it makes a huge difference.
Is anyone using a hardrive to mac-mini configuration or media player to a hardisk using USB- MiNI b ? try replacing that generic mini-b with a wireworld starlight, Ultraviolet, etc. It makes a huuuugggge difference in sound quality and picture quality.
I couldn't believe it myself.

This is the placebo effect at its best. I can't begin to describe how dumb this statement sounds from the technical side. But as we say here in Germany (roughly translated) "believes can move mountains". If one believes in something, his perception will adapt to that and I don't want to argue against believes. All I'm saying is there is no way in the technical side of things to make different digital cables change the sound or picture quality.
 
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 3:11 AM Post #4,974 of 100,254
Quote:
 
I'm sorry, I truly am. I know I shouldn't bring this up again but as an engineer, who works with this stuff, I just can't let the misinformation that floats around about this stand. The following are two PMs I exchanged with another member. They center around the claims of this website http://www.wireworldcable.com/categories/usb_cables.html but after reading the description of the cable dsnuts linked too, the claims seem to be quite universal among these "special cables".
 
The very short of it: there is no such thing as an audio USB cable. There can and never will be. For the cable there is no difference to what kind of data you send through it. You can use any cable to connect your DAC, as long as it's conforming to the USB standard. Be it 3$, 20$ or 200$.
 

 
Nice, nice, looks like I will just use some printer USB cables I already have for now. Wasn't really planning to pay $20 for one anyways. haha What you take me for nuts, I mean Dsnuts?!
tongue_smile.gif
But eventually I will have to buy a shorter ones that are made to be used with DAC etc. Will see how things go, yeah these cable discussions never ends.
biggrin.gif

 
edit: Oh yeah I think I have usb cables like these that came with my external HDD as well, thanks for the reminder from your message one kwerdenker!
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 4:46 AM Post #4,976 of 100,254
Please tell me what are the options for mobilephones? Can I use this dac thru mobile device mini to usb (galaxy note 2) or only computers because of driver install?? Is there a cheap option dac that sounds ok for mobilephones??
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 4:49 AM Post #4,977 of 100,254
Quote:
Please tell me what are the options for mobilephones? Can I use this dac thru mobile device mini to usb (galaxy note 2) or only computers because of driver install?? Is there a cheap option dac that sounds ok for mobilephones??

I'm pretty sure, if the DAC works natively with Linux, it will work with Android phones.
 
I have the SGS3 and DACs work perfectly, even controlling the volume with the phone it self (side volume buttons)
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 5:08 AM Post #4,979 of 100,254
Quote:
 
I'm sorry, I truly am. I know I shouldn't bring this up again but as an engineer, who works with this stuff, I just can't let the misinformation that floats around about this stand. The following are two PMs I exchanged with another member. They center around the claims of this website http://www.wireworldcable.com/categories/usb_cables.html but after reading the description of the cable dsnuts linked too, the claims seem to be quite universal among these "special cables".
 
The very short of it: there is no such thing as an audio USB cable. There can and never will be. For the cable there is no difference to what kind of data you send through it. You can use any cable to connect your DAC, as long as it's conforming to the USB standard. Be it 3$, 20$ or 200$.
 
 
Though they look nice, they won't change anything in the sound coming out of your DAC.
 
The best comparison I can give you, is that of the external hard drive. Do you have any special cables for it? Probably not. Like most people, you use the one that came in the box with it. Yet you trust that cable to accurately transfer the data from your PC to the hard drive. Though I should mention, that there are some differences between the two processes in the protocols that are used. For a USB music transfer, there is a higher chance (that is still very, very, very small regardless of the cable used) that you have a loss of data during the transfer period. If that would happen, you would get small gaps/glitches in the sound that's coming out of your DAC. It can not however change the sound signature of your DAC in any way. That would mean that multiple chunks of data in succession have been manipulated in a way, that influences the decoding process of the DAC in way to change the frequency spectrum of the signal. The chance for that is so infinitesimal small, that I would deem it impossible in the real world.
 
 
Hi there,
 
yes I did read there description and here is my take on it: it shows the typical signs of snake oil. They use correct technical terms in a way, that is absolutely wrong. What do I mean with this? Let's have a look:
[Note: Since most of my points are quite technical in nature, I'll try to simplify them as best as I can. Some more intricate details might get lost that way, so keep that in mind.]
In essence this is the same what I talked about in my last response. It's technical correct (in a way at least... that part about "fragile digital audio signals" is more meant to evoke emotions than anything else) but the first paragraph is just the lead in for the next part.
Now we start to leave the realm of technical correctness and enter the world of hogwash. Since they concentrate on "jitter", let's first talk about that. Yes, jitter is a real world effect in digital signals. It describes the offset between a data signal and the related clock signal. The clock is used to determine when to sample the data line(s) to see what value is currently on them (a 1 or a 0). If the shift is large enough, the receiver might not sample the intended signal and thus receive a bit error. This predominately happens in systems, where the clock signal is transmitted between the sender and the receiver via a separate clock line. Having a bad cable/connection in this kind of situation can lead to the clock signal and the data signal running out of sync on the way to the sender. To mitigate that, USB doesn't use this kind of clock distribution. Instead the receiver extracts the clock from the data signals it gets from the sender. This is done in a synchronization phase before the actual data transmission begins. Using this technology, jitter can only come into play when the sender or the receiver run into some kind of problem. The cable has no effect whatsoever on this.
Well that gave me a good chuckle... before I had to cringe at how dumb this actually is. Most people tend to think that because digital signals are represented as a square waveform, they really are that square. In fact, they are not. Or as one of my professors put it "in the end, even the digital age is analog". The following picture represents something called the eye of a signal:

(Source: http://ics.nxp.com/products/nx/usb.switches/)
You get these by overlaying multiple signal samples and as you can see, there is no square wave to be found. Digital signals still have to conform to certain physical aspects of the analog world and thus you can't make a signal jump from one voltage level (which these graphs represent btw.) to another without some rise time in between.
To accompany for the many real world factors, that influence the signals in the real world, standards include minimum/maximum ratings for certain aspects of the signal. These include things like voltage levels, rise/sink times, over/undershooting (the ripples you can see in the picture above) and many more. If you factor all these things together, you get the hexagon you can see above. As long as the signal stays out of that zone, it's considered good and the receiver can reconstruct the intended value. As you can see, there is a lot of space around that hexagon. This means that the USB standard includes quite a large buffer for errors on the signal transmission (like any good engineer would
wink.gif
).
 
Oh man, that got longer (and a bit more technical) than I expected... I hope you're still with me
redface.gif

 
As a closing argument I want to stress again, that even if their cables lead to a better signal on the receiver side, that will not improve the resulting audio signal. As long as the ones and zeros arrive in the intended order, you get the same sound. The result coming out of the analog side of the DAC is absolutely unrelated to the sharpness of the signal on the digital side (as long as it conforms to the rules of the standard).
 
And to that forum link you provided: a little part of me died when I read this post there.
 
This is the placebo effect at its best. I can't begin to describe how dumb this statement sounds from the technical side. But as we say here in Germany (roughly translated) "believes can move mountains". If one believes in something, his perception will adapt to that and I don't want to argue against believes. All I'm saying is there is no way in the technical side of things to make different digital cables change the sound or picture quality.
 

 
High cost USB cables is the biggest rip off only second to high cost HDMI and optical cables. But people still fall for that hoax, as well as burning over these (sorry people but that´s that). Cannot even call it placebo effect as there is none
 
Nov 22, 2012 at 5:10 AM Post #4,980 of 100,254
Quote:
Yes and proud of it. So I suppose that makes me somewhat related to this guy.
 

 
Surely you know he is gay ? lololol
 

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