Over on another thread - someone asked - Why not just run a spdif optical out from the PC -it sounds really good? Why go for a separate UBS interface.
My response was this:
"Really, Optical in every implementation has sounded worse to me. But Optical SPDIF are you running straight out of the PC card or laptop?
In that case the PC has to do three functions: 1)convert bits to a digital stream, like (WAVE, FLAC, DSD, MP3, etc). (2) Then convert that stream to the appropriate output format for the DAC to lock onto - say PCM. (3)Then convert that electrical signal to light pulses. The DAC then has to reconvert those light pulses back into electrical signals and then convert those digital electrical signals into analogue wave forms to send to the pre-amp. All in Realtime. With USB Asyn 2.0 the digital output is kept in the OS digital domain, using different standards or protocols (for example in Windows) like ASIO, KS (Kernal Streaming), WASAPI, DS, etc.. The best like ASIO and KS bypass the Windows mixer and on chip sound processing, passing a 'pure' digital stream to the interface processor which then converts to PCM or DSD, here the interface can output this signal in either optical or electrical formats and transmit those over spdif, either optical or coaxial to the DAC.
I've heard all the arguments about optical 'galvanic isolation' but the sound to me is closed in, almost muffled. And I have tried some of the best optical chords, and it still sounded inferior. The issue is the very inexpensive electro-optical/optical-electro converters on most MBs, cards, interfaces, or DACs. But if you like optical, the Gustard has an optical output. It comes down to clocking, jitter management, and ps filtering - all things the Gustard does extremely well.
Dedicated dual 0.1ppm Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator Clocks in the Gustard U12. Rather using one clock and the realtime errors prone to converting the math, the Gustard uses a dedicated high speed clock for each frequency.
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I guess the issue is asking a lot of the PC - especially within a very electrically noisy environment. The switching PS, fan motors, all feed back through the powers supply creating ps ripple and interference issues as well as the EMI/RFI of the CPU and associated components.
Any comments? How does your Gustard compare to running straight from the PC?
Edit PS anybody directly compare the U12 to the Gen2 board on the Schiit Bifrost? I thought someone mentioned that they had that setup