[DoYouRight]

He probably wont keep them all, but he is doing many a service for comparison. What others do with their money is their choice alone. He can still sell the ones he doesnt like and upgrade the DAC. A m2tech or whatever is still necessary for a $2000 DAC unless its an AYRE or WaveLength with their USB implementations.

 

[MikeW]

if you can afford a dac like that, you should also be able to afford an Off-Ramp.

 

[slim.a]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeW /img/forum/go_quote.gif these converter's arnt exactly peanuts, you really have to weigh their cost into a better dac to begin with. You've got 4 converters there, at roughly 465$. Could have bought a 465$ more expensive dac. Or a 160$ more dac if you just count the M2tech. With all you've spent, you could have damn near bought an Off Ramp, then you'd not worry about these comparisons because there is no better. It is a good shoot-out though and I appreciate the comparison. I'd really love a comparsion to an EMU 0404 PCI, as I suspect it may better all of these, based on specs alone. It cannot be compared to the USB Version, it's in another league entirely for SPDIF output. Just look at the tech specs at E-mu website. USB vesion is not transformer coupled, and the claimed Jitter specs are 4-5x higher. Although it's been said that the M2Tech is better then the Lynx and we can certainly assume that lynx betters the EMU. Though no one has talked about how the lynx actually sounds, only specs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tosehee /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's a good point. But, what if you already bought your DAC? Would you sell yours just to get a better DAC that you can possibly buy? These purchases are incremental. It's like not someone buy these all at once. If I had accumulated all money that I spent on Audio equipments, I can buy the THE DAC that I want. But then, I didn't know better, neither most of us are.

Like tosehee said, these purchases were incremental, I didn"t buy all of them at once, and it would have been stupide of me to do so

.For instance, I have had the emu0404 usb for close three years now. As for the other units, I acquired them during the last few months and they were relatively cheap. My wireworld ultraviolet usb cost me more than the Teralink-X for example.

Anyway, it was a trial and error thing and by writing my comparison, I wanted to share my experience with those units which might save time and money for someone looking to buy a relatively affordable and good performing usb to spdif converter.

 

[Patu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slim.a /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have noticed a slight crack when I first start playing music. However that crack doesn't repeat itself when changing songs (even with different sample rates) while playing. I don't know if it is an issue with the dac (which shuts the inputs when there is no signal) or with the converter. As for what you are experiencing, I used to have dropouts with my creative gigaworks speakers that are gone since I plugged them on Belkin pureav powerbar filter. I have never noticed such a problem in my main system for which I am using this Essential Audio Tools parallel filter.

Those filters look interesting. What's the price range for them and do they deliver to Finland?

I don't really care if there's some crack when you start to play music. That's quite normal I guess. But when the sound drops every now and then in middle of track then there's something wrong.

 

[DoYouRight]

what makes you soooo sure the offramp is better than the newest converters. m2tech might be scary to the diverter, and diverter rapes offramp.

 

[slim.a]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Those filters look interesting. What's the price range for them and do they deliver to Finland? I don't really care if there's some crack when you start to play music. That's quite normal I guess. But when the sound drops every now and then in middle of track then there's something wrong.

Those filters retail for around 120 euros in France. However, the shop I bought it in does not seem to deliver outside France.

 

[slim.a]

If the m2tech is indeed better than the Lynx cards, it is possible that it outperforms the offramp. No way to know for sure unless someone measures the jitter of both units or give them both a listen in the same system.

 

[some1x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DoYouRight /img/forum/go_quote.gif what makes you soooo sure the offramp is better than the newest converters. m2tech might be scary to the diverter, and diverter rapes offramp.

Would you link to a comparison between these two? I haven't seen any comparisons between the Diverter and similar devices in the same price range...

 

[MikeW]

I do find the M2tech intriguing, the software/driver aspect worries me abit though. Kernel streaming is not enough by itself, it needs wasapi, and Direct Sound would be great too, for convenience sake. (so I dont' have to switch outputs all the time when playing games)

 

[Patu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeW /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do find the M2tech intriguing, the software/driver aspect worries me abit though. Kernel streaming is not enough by itself, it needs wasapi, and Direct Sound would be great too, for convenience sake. (so I dont' have to switch outputs all the time when playing games)

Wait, this thing doesn't work with games at all? How about youtube-videos and normal .avi video files? I totally forgot to ask this before because it felt so obvious that this thing would support directsound also. If it doesn't then I can forget it.

 

[hawkhead]

"11)Why must I use FooBar instead of other players, such as iTunes, Media Monkey
or Windows Media Player?
So far, hiFace only works in Kernel Streaming mode. Some player, like Windows Media Player, only work in Direct Sound mode, which doesn’t allow to obtain the results provided by the Kernel Streaming mode. Nevertheless, a future extension of hiFace compatibility to Direct Sound players is planned. "

 

[slim.a]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wait, this thing doesn't work with games at all? How about youtube-videos and normal .avi video files? I totally forgot to ask this before because it felt so obvious that this thing would support directsound also. If it doesn't then I can forget it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hawkhead /img/forum/go_quote.gif "11)Why must I use FooBar instead of other players, such as iTunes, Media Monkey or Windows Media Player? So far, hiFace only works in Kernel Streaming mode. Some player, like Windows Media Player, only work in Direct Sound mode, which doesn’t allow to obtain the results provided by the Kernel Streaming mode. Nevertheless, a future extension of hiFace compatibility to Direct Sound players is planned. "

It is not supposed to work with anything else than Kernel Streaming with Foobar, MediaMonkey and Winamp.

However, I made it work by accident with Asio4all in both MediaMonkey and Foobar. So maybe there is a way to play avi files through a player that works with ASIO output ?

Anyway, with the current drivers the m2tech doesn't work with directsound, which makes its use limited to music (no movies or games for now). For now, I am going back and forth between m2tech (BNC)for music and Teralink-X (optical) for movies. It is not very user friendly but the added quality listening to music is well worth it.

 

[tosehee]

I agree with DS support. I use the onboard optical for other things than listening to music. Even a movie needs to be played on the optical. So, this support is definitely something I'd like to get in a near future.

Fortunately, OSX Drivers are coming along nicely with Kernel extension that should bypass integer -> float and float -> integer conversion. Can't wait for this.

 

[gattari]

Today I received the hiFace
The first impression is very very good.
I have the musiland 02 U.S., it is great, but I believe that through the USB interface we reached the top with Hiface
The Hiface in my setup with the Valab akm dac is clearly superior to musiland.
Here nuances is not the question, but clarity of musical message.
Ciao

 

[slim.a]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gattari /img/forum/go_quote.gif Today I received the hiFace The first impression is very very good. I have the musiland 02 U.S., it is great, but I believe that through the USB interface we reached the top with Hiface The Hiface in my setup with the Valab akm dac is clearly superior to musiland. Here nuances is not the question, but clarity of musical message. Ciao

Gattari, interesting to know that the Hiface outperforms the Musiland 02 which I have read is superior to the Musiland 01 I have.

Out of curiosity, which digital cable are you using between the hiface and your dac ?