DDC - Digital USB interfaces - Xmos or Amanero Combo384 based - Raspberry Pi - HifiBerry DAC+ Pro - reviews, comparison, modifications and USB-Audio in general

[rb2013]

No takers on the Supra 2.0 USB 2M cable I listed - dropped the price to $29.
 
Doesn't anybody want to try this?

 

[CFGamescape]

Sorry to sorta double-post, but this seems like the more relevant DDC-related thread. I am looking to use the latest and greatest driver that is compatible with the U12 where I can simply install it and have it work (no changing UIDs or PIDs, etc.). I'm currently using the 2.26 one, but based on what I've read, there are sure to be better options? Or, is no one using the U12 anymore?
 
Or should I just return the U12 and get something else. I honestly can't tell the difference with or without it...

 

[hgpsemaj]

You may try these:
 
 V3.20.0版本：http://pan.baidu.com/s/1V7oJG
 
 
 V2.26.0版本：http://pan.baidu.com/s/1ntDUtqp

 

[abartels]

 

Yes, always having fun 

I had some troubles getting I2S input AK4495SEQ working with RPI and Amanero board. Finally decided to put back isolated XMOS which works (and sounds) perfectly.

Btw, abandoned Jplay, since I am in SinglePC mode now, JPlay isn't of any use anymore. It even seemed  to degraded SQ on this SinglePC (the HP laptop),
so I must say, you were right 

Will try RPI with my other AK4495SEQ dac's (NO DSD). Thanks for the RuneAudio tip, but I prefer headless player, so will try PiCoreplayer which also supports RPI3 by now 

The Ian FiFo II is a comprehensive reclocker which rebuilds I2S completely. Ian has a little board to connect to RPI, so you don't need HifiBerry DAC+Pro for it's I2S signal.
The FiFo also needs an isolator board between FiFo II and DAC.

Other interesting projects are the "Direct DSD" projects from Acko and Nautibuoy at diyaudio

Nautibuoy's project: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/273474-best-dac-no-dac.html

Acko's Direct Drive DSD project: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/group-buys/280763-direct-drive-dsd.html

Acko's Amanero/Reclocker project: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/group-buys/227502-amanero-isolator-reclocker-gb.html

Wont comment on jplay and risk tbe wrath of the 'goldenear' hordes

Afaik all those audio 'optimized' rpi distros are headless. But the picoplayer one seems to be the slimest indeed. And btw most distros use Mpd as player. Slim, headless, low level and comes with clients for all phone/tablet/pc os-es http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients. I'd say you should give it a try.

Ianfifo sounds like the best device for your project: cheap, small and fully customizable on all levels. Hope to hear more about it from you soon.


As about the direct-dsd 'dacs' that sounds like a great idea too. IIRC, lampizator has a pricey & well reviewed device which works exactly like that. Only problem here is the pcm2dsd conversion on rpi. Not sure if there any good convertors for linux .. and it could be too hard a job for the small rpi-s. But I guess it has to be tried first.

Have a great weekend. Hope you have the same amazingly sunny weather there.

Hahahaha, yes, better not mention JPlay 

 
There indeed are many distro's who could compete with PiCoreplayer, but that is something I will try later on. First things first, have to have a good hardware setup.
The Ian FIFO II is not that cheap as you think, it needs isolator board and DACBOARD too, so including shipment we are talking about something in the range of $300.
But, this would be best option for now, sadly no DSD, so, not sure if I have to wait for Ian's DSD project 

 
About Direct DSD: I would let PC handle conversion, NOT rpi since it obviously hasn't enough cpu power to do the trick.
 
I read your post today, the weather wasn't bad but not as promised,,,,, so only 2 hours of sun yesterday, rest of weekend was really cloudy 

 

[prot]

You may try these:

 V3.20.0版本：http://pan.baidu.com/s/1V7oJG


 V2.26.0版本：http://pan.baidu.com/s/1ntDUtqp

Thx for the 3.2 link, those things are almost impossible to google. At least for non chinese speakers. Will try it asap.

Sorry to sorta double-post, but this seems like the more relevant DDC-related thread. I am looking to use the latest and greatest driver that is compatible with the U12 where I can simply install it and have it work (no changing UIDs or PIDs, etc.). I'm currently using the 2.26 one, but based on what I've read, there are sure to be better options? Or, is no one using the U12 anymore?

Or should I just return the U12 and get something else. I honestly can't tell the difference with or without it...

The 2.26 driver works very well in my setup, never had any glitches (and I have 3 other usb audio drvs on that winpc).
You should try 3.20 but dont get your hopes up much. If there is any SQ improvement, most probably it'll be very small.
In spite of all the hype posts, the DDCs arent exactly the promoted 'universal usb cure' .. pc, dac, power or even (extremeley rarely) cables still make a big difference. Unless you have a seriously screwed digital setup (e.g. very old pc or usb dac, big power issues, etc) you will not hear any of those advertised 'night & day' diffs. And could very well be that your pc usb is already clean enough or you dac 'cleans' usb very well and there are no SQ improvements to be had. In fact, I bet that most people wont hear a ddc improvement.

What I hear from my (heavily modded u12) is a bit of extra bass and a slight improvement in sound 'roundness' and maybe even detail. But it's all quite subtle and I wont bet on a blind test.
So .. give the box some settling time and try to a/b it carefully 1-2 times. If no diffs and you still want to try, I would recommemd a puc2lite. Hard to quantify the diffs clearly but the puc2 in my setup just sonds more powerful, enjoyable & 'musical'.
Good luck.

 

[CFGamescape]

Thx for the 3.2 link, those things are almost impossible to google. At least for non chinese speakers. Will try it asap.
The 2.26 driver works very well in my setup, never had any glitches (and I have 3 other usb audio drvs on that winpc).
You should try 3.20 but dont get your hopes up much. If there is any SQ improvement, most probably it'll be very small.
In spite of all the hype posts, the DDCs arent exactly the promosed universal usb cure .. pc, dac, power or even (extremeley rarely) cables can make a difference. Unless you have a seriously screwed digital setup (e.g. very old pc or usb dac, big power issues, etc) you will not hear any of those advertised 'nigh & day' diffs. And could very well be that yoir pc usb is already clean enough or you dac cleans it very well and there are no SQ improvements to be had. In fact I bet most people wont hear a ddc improvement.

What I hear from my (heavily modded u12) is a bit of extra bass and a slight improvement in sound 'roundness' and maybe even detail. But it's all quite subtle and I wont bet on a blind test.
So .. give the box some settling time and try to a/b it carefully 1-2 times. If no diffs and you still want to try, I would recommemd a puc2lite. Hard to quantify the diffs clearly but the puc2 in my setup just sonds more powerful, enjoyable & 'musical'.
Good luck.

Hi, yeah, I totally agree with you on everything. I've had the U12 for about a month and a half now. My PC is a very high-end gaming PC that has about 7k worth of parts, but I don't know if any of that benefits audio. I use Fidelizer Pro, which I think makes a difference.

Maybe I need to do some more A/B testing before I return the U12 (if I still can). I guess there is the peace-of-mind and/or placebo factor of having a DDC, among other things, in my chain, but I certainly don't have golden ears, short term audio memory or whatever some folks seem to have to be able to decern all these subtleties between devices.

My main gripe is the U12 doesn't have the traditional driver support of similarly-priced hardware. It's like this thing is an afterthought to their other products. Or, maybe this is normal for DDCs in this day and age?

Thanks for your recommendation on the PUC2Lite.

 

[b0bb]

  The Ian FIFO II is not that cheap as you think, it needs isolator board and DACBOARD too, so including shipment we are talking about something in the range of $300.
But, this would be best option for now, sadly no DSD, so, not sure if I have to wait for Ian's DSD project 

 

 
I took closer look at the HifiBerry DAC+PRO board and see there is already a MCLK generator and they are using the ES9023's PLL to do the reclocking. More importantly I think the special driver is already in Linux and in the Picoreplayer distribution.
 
One other reason you may have had trouble with the 4495 initially is that the formatting of the I2S stream is for the ES9023, check the 4495's manual to see if it different and the Hifiberry guys may be able to tell you the format they used or if you are able, read the kernel driver source on Github for the exact setup they used for the ES9023.
 
If you get the Amanero isolator board, all the necessary I2S lines are there, DIYINHK gives out the PCB for free, you pay shipping.
 
Basically, if you do the the following RPI ->Amanero Isolator->DAC+ Pro->AK4495, you have an alternate to Ian's FIFO reclocker except you save $300.
 
PS: I think you get DSD as we are dealing with just the bit stream, check with HiFiberry to make sure they did not touch the DoP header

 

[abartels]

 

  The Ian FIFO II is not that cheap as you think, it needs isolator board and DACBOARD too, so including shipment we are talking about something in the range of $300.
But, this would be best option for now, sadly no DSD, so, not sure if I have to wait for Ian's DSD project 

 

 
I took closer look at the HifiBerry DAC+ board and see there is already a MCLK generator and they are using the ES9023's PLL to do the reclocking. More importantly I think the special driver is already in Linux and in the Picoreplayer distribution.
 
One other reason you may have had trouble with the 4495 initially is that the formatting of the I2S stream is for the ES9023, check the 4495's manual to see if it different and the Hifiberry guys may be able to tell you the format they used or if you are able, read the kernel driver source on Github for the exact setup they used for the ES9023.
 
If you get the Amanero isolator board, all the necessary I2S lines are there, DIYINHK gives out the PCB for free, you pay shipping.
 
Basically, if you do the the following RPI ->Amanero Isolator->DAC+ Pro->AK4495, you have an alternate to Ian's FIFO reclocker except you save $300.
 
PS: I think you get DSD as we are dealing with just the bit stream, check with HiFiberry to make sure they did not touch the DoP header

 
Hi B0bb,
 
Yes, it has MCLK, but it doesn't have ESS but BB PCM5122 on board. And, yes, the driver to use the two separate clocks is already implemented in the latest distributions.
They even fixed the 100% in alsamixer.
 
Clocks on DAC+Pro aren't that special, and can't replace them because they are switched thru software (driver). It's not only the isolation which is important, the fifo reclocker does the most important job,
and the dual clockboard does generate a very clean, phase noise free clocksignal. Isolator between them is just as expected I would say.
 
No, in no way I could create same circumstances and having same SQ as with Ians products in the line, thanks for the tip but this really won't work.
 
Btw, it seems DAC+Pro does NOT do DoP, I tried it but not working, it works with other I2S interfaces at same dac, so it's DAC+Pro who is not DoP compliant.

 

[prot]

Hahahaha, yes, better not mention JPlay 

There indeed are many distro's who could compete with PiCoreplayer, but that is something I will try later on. First things first, have to have a good hardware setup.
The Ian FIFO II is not that cheap as you think, it needs isolator board and DACBOARD too, so including shipment we are talking about something in the range of $300.
But, this would be best option for now, sadly no DSD, so, not sure if I have to wait for Ian's DSD project :wink_face:

About Direct DSD: I would let PC handle conversion, NOT rpi since it obviously hasn't enough cpu power to do the trick.

I read your post today, the weather wasn't bad but not as promised,,,,, so only 2 hours of sun yesterday, rest of weekend was really cloudy :confused_face:

Oops, that Fifo is much more exp than I thought. But then you cant put a price on the perfect solution
And yes the weather app lied a bit .. grill on the balcony was nevertheless very succesful

Hi, yeah, I totally agree with you on everything. I've had the U12 for about a month and a half now. My PC is a very high-end gaming PC that has about 7k worth of parts, but I don't know if any of that benefits audio. I use Fidelizer Pro, which I think makes a difference.

Maybe I need to do some more A/B testing before I return the U12 (if I still can). I guess there is the peace-of-mind and/or placebo factor of having a DDC, among other things, in my chain, but I certainly don't have golden ears, short term audio memory or whatever some folks seem to have to be able to decern all these subtleties between devices.

My main gripe is the U12 doesn't have the traditional driver support of similarly-priced hardware. It's like this thing is an afterthought to their other products. Or, maybe this is normal for DDCs in this day and age?

Thanks for your recommendation on the PUC2Lite.

Your 7k super gaming rig may be a bit much. Generally, 'optimize for audio' is done by eliminating/disabling every single unused pc component, both hw and sw .. also regulated LPS power, nofan, etc. Whether those 'optimizations' make any diff is almost impossible for anyone to say in advance .. although many will tell you the night&day story . Hard to say if your pc has anything with the non-existing SQ diffs. Btw what dac?

The drv situation is same for pretty much all china ddc-s discussed around here. My guess is that they are not paying the thesycon licence. But the shady drivers are working very well and the u12 is prolly the best.. dont remember seeing any complains.

And btw if you can/want to order from EU, there should be some cheap puc2 on ebay.de .. about €200 IIRC

 

[CFGamescape]

Your 7k super gaming rig may be a bit much. Generally, 'optimize for audio' is done by eliminating/disabling every single unused pc component, both hw and sw .. also regulated LPS power, nofan, etc. Whether those 'optimizations' make any diff is almost impossible for anyone to say in advance .. although many will tell you the night&day story

. Hard to say if your pc has anything with the non-existing SQ diffs. Btw what dac?

The drv situation is same for pretty much all china ddc-s discussed around here. My guess is that they are not paying the thesycon licence. But the shady drivers are working very well and the u12 is prolly the best.. dont remember seeing any complains.

And btw if you can/want to order from EU, there should be some cheap puc2 on ebay.de .. about €200 IIRC

Thanks for the reply. My gaming PC is for...gaming. I got into audio stuff afterwards. It seems to be doing fine playing music through Tidal. I have no plans of replacing it with an optimized PC for audio. My DAC is the Schiit Bifrost MB. Amp is Lyr 2. Headphones Ether C.
 
I'm going to keep the U12 and use that 3.2 driver. I'm at work so I can't attempt to download at the moment. Let me know how it works out for you. Thanks!

 

[Caper]

No problem. Glad you found some of my post to be useful or informative.

I recommend the intona over any device of its kind. Which are USB cleaners, reclocker , regen, isolators for power. But this intona is one of about 2 or three products that does isolation of the USB data. It uses two Spartan fpga' to break down and rebuild the data from the dirty to clean side.it's a great piece of gear to own if you use USB at all. Simply put, it will give you the most out of your USB.
I have owned everything you can imagine from the Uptone regen, jitterbug, wyrd, etc etc. sold all of them except r wyrd, which is what my wife uses on her setup.
her psu in the computer had a noisy 5v USB line that is around 15mV-20mV
My psu is about 7-9mV and too noisey for me. That's why I got the dedicated Paul Hynes lps for the Paul pang ocxo v3 usb3.0 card... I could of saved a grip of money if I just got the intona. As it lets regular USB ports sound 98-99% as good as with the ppa3 ocxo and Hynes lps. Kinda frustrating. But true.
So that's why I recommend it

check it out! The guts are impressive too.

 I am now almost pushing the BUY button.
Might go for the standard version.
If I understand you right, with the Intona before my ddc I will not need anything else in the chain between pc and ddc?
I can remove that Aqvox usb psu?
It´s feeding the ddc with cleaner power.
Maybe later buy a better 19v linear psu to my Intel NUC, or is that also overkill with the Intona in the chain?

 

[motberg]

   I am now almost pushing the BUY button.
Might go for the standard version.
If I understand you right, with the Intona before my ddc I will not need anything else in the chain between pc and ddc?
I can remove that Aqvox usb psu?
It´s feeding the ddc with cleaner power.
Maybe later buy a better 19v linear psu to my Intel NUC, or is that also overkill with the Intona in the chain?

I am using the standard Intona and it works great.
The best would be to use the Aqvox to power the Intona, just hook it up same as you would to the DDC, but to the Intona. I assume the Aqvox has enough power.
You do not want anything after the Intona unless it is an isolated device or battery powered. I suggest to use a good USB cable 0.5M or less between the Intona and your DDC.
For the 0.5M USB cable, I like the Pangea AG... not so expensive and does not degrade the rest of my USB chain.
(I am reclocking after the Intona using a battery powered Wyred 4 Sound "Recovery" device, but that may not be cost effective in every case)
First check the status with the Intona, get used to the sound.. then if you want to try any upgrades after that buy with a return policy in case it is not worth the cost in your case.
Note there are other options to the Intona now available and in planning that offer isolation, so make sure the Intona works for you before the trial period expires.

 

[bimmer100]

 I am now almost pushing the BUY button.
Might go for the standard version.
If I understand you right, with the Intona before my ddc I will not need anything else in the chain between pc and ddc?
I can remove that Aqvox usb psu?
It´s feeding the ddc with cleaner power.
Maybe later buy a better 19v linear psu to my Intel NUC, or is that also overkill with the Intona in the chain?

I have the industrial version intona. The USB plugs are high retention and potentially are less resistance. Also the manufacturer stated the industrial version is most compatible with dacs compared to the standard version. It outputs slightly more power than the standard version.

In my tests it's made the most difference on laptops and low end pc's or average spec builds. As most pc's have horrid psu's as well as most Macs too. Ripple is quite high from 15-30mV even!
And experiment with you Acvox. I don't know. Try with and without. Buts it's likely you won't need all the clutter IMHO. I personally wouldn't add anything after the intona. Everything I tried just made sound quality to suffer. Jitterbug, wyrd, regen etc. and I just use supra USB cable now. The LH labs 2g dual didn't make enough difference to justify try price. Basically about the same yet takes twice as many USB ports

And there are other isolation options that do data and power... Now, but few I would trust to eliminate the 8khz packet noise. As that's really the main reason I keep the intona in my setup. That alone is worth t and makes USB worth using.

 

[Caper]

Thanks for your advice!
 
Ordered the Intona standard, hopefully it´s enough for my needs.
 
Maybe a stupid question but if I get rid of the Aqvox and buy a 19v LPS to my Intel NUC, would it be a better choise than just Aqvox?
Or...use both 19v LPS to the NUC and also Aqvox to feed the Intona and then to the DDC?

 

[Caper]

I answer my own question 

 
Can´t really see the need for LPS to the Intel NUC as I will configure it.
My config will be as follow:
 
Intel NUC with a Sbooster Vbus2 isolator (blocker) connected at USB port, totally disconnects the USB train from dirty 5v.
https://www.sbooster.com/sbooster-tweaks/sbooster-vbus-isolator
 
El cheapo USB cable for data transport.
 
Aqvox USB PSU
http://www.aqvox.de/usb-power_en.html
 
Intona USB Isolator powered by the Aqvox.
 
Supra USB cable to the F1 DDC.
 
And finally Oehlbach coax cable from the F1 to my Hegels coax input.
 
This should be a good solution and the final step in upgrading for now.
But I have an eye open for the Pro4A also when it´s available in about two weeks.