[00940]

Dumb question. It seems that the 954 and the Elgar are quite similar. Did you try to connect the Elgar to the Fireface to get an idea of the result ? The Elgar can output a 44.1KHz clock (master mode) to the Fireface through a BNC cable.

NB : I know you plan to sell the DCS stack.

 

[Patrick82]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EdipisReks you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. here, let me try: humans can hear up to 35 purple elves!!

What is the point of telling people they are wrong without giving an explanation?
Humans can't hear above 20 kHz but they can hear the wrong timing. I said that SACD has 192 kHz sampling rate and not frequency range. The higher the sampling rate is the more accurate the signal becomes, there is less jitter which makes it sound smoother and more realistic. No source is perfectly jitter-free, that's why you need upsampling.

 

[00940]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick82 What is the point of telling people they are wrong without giving an explanation? Humans can't hear above 20 kHz but they can hear the wrong timing. I said that SACD has 192 kHz sampling rate and not frequency range. The higher the sampling rate is the more accurate the signal becomes, there is less jitter which makes it sound smoother and more realistic. No source is perfectly jitter-free, that's why you need upsampling.

Not sure what you mean by jitter here...

It is a well known fact that oversampling (or upsampling) DAC are more sensitive to clock jitter. NOS DAC are less sensitive.

 

[JahJahBinks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hungrych http://www.lessloss.com/

looks like they know what they are talking about.

Has anyone tried their product yet?

 

[Garbz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick82 The higher the sampling rate is the more accurate the signal becomes, there is less jitter which makes it sound smoother and more realistic. No source is perfectly jitter-free, that's why you need upsampling.

Um no, that's not why upsampling is done at all. It has to do with neither jitter nor timing, and the "improvement" in sound is debatable, although in this case I agree with you and say upsampling is better.


This one here is a DIY project. I'm not posting it as a viable option for the original question but they also posted up all their research for the project on the web. So if anyone wants a VERY detailed explaination of jitter how it works how to improve it etc http://members.chello.nl/~m.heijlige...tml/dactop.htm. They use synchronous reclocking very similar to the LessLoss DAC.

 

[JahJahBinks]

looks like audio note DAC.

 

[GoRedwings19]

Bangraman>IIRC you said you have a reimyo DAP 777 and you expressed dissappointment in it role as a dac for your PC base setup.

I was wondering do you still have it or have you already sold it?

 

[lfeagan]

Bangraman,
I agree with the sentiment that eliminating noise from your PC would be a wise start. In particular, I would go for a fanless, diskless desktop with a storage server located elsewhere. I have a like this and am very pleased. A good place to search for fanless machines would be here: http://www.mini-itx.com/ They have products that should help you design & implement a fanless,diskless thin client. For a storage server, I would recommend implementing a RAID5 or RAID6 solution. Most people either (a) shudder in fear of the word RAID followed by a number != (0,1) or (b) just ignore the suggestion of a RAID5/6 solution as they think they don't need one.

For starters, I will say that having a centralized storage solution can really cut down on the everyday hassles of getting to your files if you work from a number of machines and that are perhaps geographically seperated as well. Steps to getting a nice storage server:
(1) get decent PC + (Areca,3Ware) hardware RAID card + 4,8, or more hard drives to your liking that are at the current sweet spot in pricing or just above it. Currently that is at 300GB. I have a nice XLS I update regularly of the $/GB, you too can make one too in a jiffy to find the sweet spot.
(2) Install your favorite linux distro. Why linux? Well, traditionally they have the broadest support for whatever hardware RAID card you might choose. Also, the price is right

(3) if you would like to remotely access your server from remote location, setup sshd (the SSH daemon), make sure you don't use idiotic passwords, don't allow remote root login (you can always 'su' after login), forward the port on your gateway/firewall, get a dyndns account setup, and tell your router/firewall to update the dyndns info whenever its external IP address changes
(4) setup some form of thin client support on your server to remote boot your Mini-ITX fanless box over the network. Personal favorite is the Linux Terminal Server Project, but there are others out there.
(5) Enjoy the sound of silence!

Hope this helps.
Lance

 

[bangraman]

lfeagen


Good points, but all my home-use PC's are already silenced to different degrees, and honestly speaking as far as the PC set-up is concerned, you're talking to someone who is by any measure extensively set-up in terms of personal computing hardware. I now have a Mac in every room of my home (I'm gradually 'switching'), and my main PC is a quieted dual-Opteron 270. My media server runs RAID5 on notebook drives. My personal media backup server is a separate machine in my colocated rack space where I keep some of my business-related servers... you get the idea.


The context of this thread is not regarding the PC hardware, but rather what to stick onto it to get it to make a sound.

 

[Colhd]

Bangraman,

I am another who is keen on getting the best sound quality out of a Mac based system. I have been curious about the Empirical Audio Off Ramp units which theoretically should improve the quality of an SPDIF signal to a dac (and one of the reviews I read about the Reimyo DAP-777 did mention that the better the transport the better it sounded). Has anybody actually heard one?

Another item not mentioned. As an Apogee user (MiniDac) I asked Apogee themselves whether their bigger Rosetta dacs would be better or what a BigBen would do. They said the Rosetta would sound the same as the Mini-Dac but that the BigBen should improve things to some extent - they certainly did not say it was night and day. This was knowing that the BigBen was not controlling the timing for the whole system but merely "tidying" up the SPDIF on Toslink on it's way from the Mac to the MiniDac. I have not purchased a BigBen (still undecided) but I was kind of impressed that the company did not encourage me to spend further cash on the Rosetta. I also asked them about the Firewire input module that could be purchased for the Rosetta. I don't know whether this module converts to SPDIF before sending it further into the dac but again they said that it was unlikely that the Mac-Firewire-Rosetta would sound better than the Mac-Toslink-MiniDac.

I don't know what I will end up buying but my best guess at this time is one of the battery powered Empirical Audio Off Ramp products, either using an SPDIF output to try and maximise the quality of this "old fashioned" output or with the I2S output to an appropriate dac (but notthe Zanden as it is unfortunately outside my budget). This is based on my (possibly faulty) understanding that the clock signal within the SPDIF data from the source still controls the subsequent dac, even with FIFO buffers, PLL etc. Possibly something like the Chord DAC64 with it's very large buffer can completely re-clock the signal but I don't think many others can. As such getting a stable data stream from the Off Ramp seems logical to me.

Don't know if any of this helps but I look forward to hearing the results of whatever route you eventually go down.

Cheers,

Col

 

[jjcha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colhd I have not purchased a BigBen (still undecided) but I was kind of impressed that the company did not encourage me to spend further cash on the Rosetta.

I know mbratrud uses a BigBen to help out his computer/DAC setup (I think he's got the DHA3000/L3000 right now), and he's had good experiences with it. He doesn't post often but anyone interested might want to PM him.

Best,

-Jason

PS: Oh also, ironically I got my DAC64 for use in a computer system, but I've never really used it! Somehow I got suckered into getting the transport as well. I do remember when I tried it briefly, there is an issue with lock. I was using the m-audio Transit to send out a digital optical signal to the DAC64 - but on iTunes, whenever the tracks changed, I guess the m-audio didn't send a constant data stream? The DAC64 would lose the lock, then have to relock, which, with the buffer, takes 4 ~ 5 seconds. Kinda annoying. I'm sure there's a solution to it, but I only put maybe 10 minutes into trying it out.

 

[bangraman]

I'm not really any closer to finalising this. I'm coming to the state of the mind that perhaps I ought to concentrate on amping the Fireface as best as possible for both headphone and speaker.


I have been fiddling with the clocks with the Elgar Plus / Verona / Fireface but I seem to be getting confused. Actually, quite annoyed how tricky it seems to be to get either the Fireface to look as though it is the clock for the Elgar Plus, or get the Verona to work as the master clock in the system. Perhaps it is a Fireface issue, or a Verona issue or perhaps it is just me. Beyond acting as a simple ASIO playback device, I have to admit that the Fireface is something of a complicated bag of tricks which I probably haven't gone to knowing as well as I should. And I also realise the demerits of buying a professional tool for my personal entertainment purposes, especially to a hassle-hating person such as myself.


At the moment therefore, I can say I REALLY like the idea of USB-I2S if it is genuinely plug & play. But I have no intention of paying through the nose for it. It looks like I can foist the three-box onto one of my better heeled friends for a decent price so I really would like to make my mind up.

 

[00940]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman I have been fiddling with the clocks with the Elgar Plus / Verona / Fireface but I seem to be getting confused. Actually, quite annoyed how tricky it seems to be to get either the Fireface to look as though it is the clock for the Elgar Plus, or get the Verona to work as the master clock in the system. Perhaps it is a Fireface issue, or a Verona issue.

Wouldn't it be easier to remove the verona from the loop and use the master clock output of the Elgar directly to the Fireface configured in autosync ? The bad point is that you will only be able to play files encoded at 44.1KHz with the Elgar as master.