Wavelength
Member of the Trade: Wavelength Audio
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2005
- Posts
- 137
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- 25
Gang,
I have been computer audio for about 5 years now. Here's a few bits/bytes of information that I have gathered over the years.
First one of the real reason's a computer is better than a transport is that it can go back and re-read a track till it receives an error free copy of the original. A transport cannot do this as it is required to feed the information to the SPDIF transmitter and therefore will pass errors onto the dac. I have a few extra pins on my modified Shigarki transport (X03 Tent module & power supply) to monitor errors. They happen espeically with poorly made cd's and older ones. On a computer these will sound better than with any transport.
On the PC & Mac each player seems to have it's own personallity and sound associated with it. I think this is basically due to the interpretation of the file type and then passing that data down the line.
All the ASIO modules simply buffer data to the lower levels. They do not effect the bits at all. BUT... they can over run and under run the low level drivers and this can make them sound different. Especially to different players and especially to the lower drivers.
Board level products have not really come to age. The PC/Mac's suck as far as clean power and low noise. Someone really needs to make a board that is externally powered (or battery powered) for the analog section. DC-DC covertors and believe me (as I have designed mother boards) are all over a mother board and invade the ground like dirt on a black car.
USB and Firewire are both capable some by drivers and some not. I think we are just coming into what is really capable here. In general there is no jitter on these interfaces like there is on SPDIF because they lack the clock like SPDIF has (i.e SPDIF has data & clock multiplexed as one signal). Since USB and Firewire is just data then it has no jitter. This is does not mean that there isn't jitter in a USB/Firewire dac. There is always some "intrinsic" jitter in any serial clocked device. The nice thing is we can so much better manage this because we don't have to deal with the problems of clock recovery as much. In USB you can do Async mode which means in a sense that the DAC controls the computer's clocking. You can then supply a very low jitter clock to the USB controller and get the intrsinc jitter down very low.
In the end... I think computers do a much better job and they keep getting better. Heck when was the last time you got a software update for your transport?
Thanks
Gordon
I have been computer audio for about 5 years now. Here's a few bits/bytes of information that I have gathered over the years.
First one of the real reason's a computer is better than a transport is that it can go back and re-read a track till it receives an error free copy of the original. A transport cannot do this as it is required to feed the information to the SPDIF transmitter and therefore will pass errors onto the dac. I have a few extra pins on my modified Shigarki transport (X03 Tent module & power supply) to monitor errors. They happen espeically with poorly made cd's and older ones. On a computer these will sound better than with any transport.
On the PC & Mac each player seems to have it's own personallity and sound associated with it. I think this is basically due to the interpretation of the file type and then passing that data down the line.
All the ASIO modules simply buffer data to the lower levels. They do not effect the bits at all. BUT... they can over run and under run the low level drivers and this can make them sound different. Especially to different players and especially to the lower drivers.
Board level products have not really come to age. The PC/Mac's suck as far as clean power and low noise. Someone really needs to make a board that is externally powered (or battery powered) for the analog section. DC-DC covertors and believe me (as I have designed mother boards) are all over a mother board and invade the ground like dirt on a black car.
USB and Firewire are both capable some by drivers and some not. I think we are just coming into what is really capable here. In general there is no jitter on these interfaces like there is on SPDIF because they lack the clock like SPDIF has (i.e SPDIF has data & clock multiplexed as one signal). Since USB and Firewire is just data then it has no jitter. This is does not mean that there isn't jitter in a USB/Firewire dac. There is always some "intrinsic" jitter in any serial clocked device. The nice thing is we can so much better manage this because we don't have to deal with the problems of clock recovery as much. In USB you can do Async mode which means in a sense that the DAC controls the computer's clocking. You can then supply a very low jitter clock to the USB controller and get the intrsinc jitter down very low.
In the end... I think computers do a much better job and they keep getting better. Heck when was the last time you got a software update for your transport?
Thanks
Gordon
