[2222440]

Quote:

^ Couldn't have said it better AiDee.
 
A few additions about the Ciunas. If I were to really scrutinize its sound, I'd say it could use some liquidity in the mids and render a larger soundstage. I still think it plays in the same league as the PWD MK2 and Ref7.1 (with the Ciunas converter). The PWD is the lushest, most coloured of the three, and also the most liquid. I just don't like its congested sound. The Ref has the largest, most immersive sound (also the least fatiguing). The Ciunas is the most neutral (though erring very slightly towards the brighter/leaner side because of its tendency towards dryness rather than tubey wetness).

 
I agree with the description to Ciunas.  
I find the tendency towards dryness(very slightly, almost unnoticeable ) could be adjusted by using warm sounding cables, including the USB cable.

 

[customNuts]

I sold my OR5 maxxed as it was too much money to be tied up in a converter. Excellent but way over priced imo. Bought the Yulong Da8 with the money and it is an incredible dac with an excellent usb input. 
Has anyone tried the ciunas converter with the DA8??  
I am seriously thinking about taking the plunge with the ciunas converter. If it get's close to the or5 turboclock I will be happy. 

 

[Solude]

For those with the converter, many quality of life issues?  Mute and volume work etc.

 

[che15]

Not picking any fights , but I never heard ANY PS audio component described as having a lush sound.
Neither the dac32 or ciunas sound dry to me , I have tube amps and DAC and they don't sound lusher than ciunas to me.
I know we all have different ears but I heard a lot of gear in the last 20 years.

 

[alancohen]

Quote:

I've done some personal experiments and for the life of me can't hear any difference whether I'm playing off a external hard-drive or the internal SSD of my laptop. The audiophile in me prefers playing directly from my laptop SSD as there is one less wire my music goes through, but then I wonder because I can't hear any audible differences, at least from my laptop and my external hard drive. I think it's easy enough to experiment. Duplicate the file and try A/B back and forth to see if you can hear any difference.

 
Ever since installing my Ciunas my music enjoyment has taken a huge step forward. But something was missing. I still wasn't getting that nice, creamy vinyl sound. Being I had very little frame of reference, and it's so hard to A/B this stuff, I figured: it is what it is. 
 

To add to the confusion I've moved my entire library around a few times and I thought the degradation I was experiencing might be due to this.
 
Being that I store AIFF files, my 1TB USB drive was getting full anyway, so I pulled the trigger on a 3TB Firewire 800 drive. Since USB 3.0, Firewire has dropped in price-if you can even find them. 
 
Well...problem solved! I've been working my way through my library and even crappy little MP3 files sound much better. Before everything sounded 'efforted', with little bits of occasional break-ups. Now, if I closed my eyes and pretend, I could swear a slab of vinyl was spinning in the corner. The only thing that brings me back to digital reality is the lacks of pops and crackles. 

Happy-happy.
 
So yes, I would conclude that it is bad to retrieve  music data through a USB port while simultaneously playing back through a USB DAC. 

 

[M-13]

Quote:

 
Ever since installing my Ciunas my music enjoyment has taken a huge step forward. But something was missing. I still wasn't getting that nice, creamy vinyl sound. Being I had very little frame of reference, and it's so hard to A/B this stuff, I figured: it is what it is. 
 

To add to the confusion I've moved my entire library around a few times and I thought the degradation I was experiencing might be due to this.
 
Being that I store AIFF files, my 1TB USB drive was getting full anyway, so I pulled the trigger on a 3TB Firewire 800 drive. Since USB 3.0, Firewire has dropped in price-if you can even find them. 
 
Well...problem solved! I've been working my way through my library and even crappy little MP3 files sound much better. Before everything sounded 'efforted', with little bits of occasional break-ups. Now, if I closed my eyes and pretend, I could swear a slab of vinyl was spinning in the corner. The only thing that brings me back to digital reality is the lacks of pops and crackles. 

Happy-happy.
 
So yes, I would conclude that it is bad to retrieve  music data through a USB port while simultaneously playing back through a USB DAC. 

That's great man. It's always nice to hear that people have found their sweet spot and can just enjoy listening to music without worrying about their gear.
 
The reason I'm responding is I wanted to clear up the fact that moving music files around from one hard drive to another should not degrade them in anyway. There are USB protocals that double check the data, sending information back and forth to make sure all data is intact. This of course doesn't work when you're streaming music live as the transfer is considered isochronous and not bulk transfer, and so we invest $1000 dollars on DACs to minimize the loss. But yeah unless something is wrong with your computer or hard drives, simply transferring files back and forth will not degrade them (as far as I know).

 

[highstream]

M-13 wrote: "...But yeah unless something is wrong with your computer or hard drives, simply transferring files back and forth will not degrade them (as far as I know)."

I have the impression that the discussion is about the vagaries of playing music from an external drive via USB, not from an internal one that uses a different protocol, SATA for example. Have I misunderstood?

 

[M-13]

Did you read alancohen's post?
 
He specifically says:
 
[size=small]"To add to the confusion I've moved my entire library around a few times and I thought the degradation I was experiencing might be due to this.[/size]"
 
I was responding to this. Not sure why that was confusing.

 

[alancohen]

Quote:

That's great man. It's always nice to hear that people have found their sweet spot and can just enjoy listening to music without worrying about their gear.
 
The reason I'm responding is I wanted to clear up the fact that moving music files around from one hard drive to another should not degrade them in anyway. There are USB protocals that double check the data, sending information back and forth to make sure all data is intact. This of course doesn't work when you're streaming music live as the transfer is considered isochronous and not bulk transfer, and so we invest $1000 dollars on DACs to minimize the loss. But yeah unless something is wrong with your computer or hard drives, simply transferring files back and forth will not degrade them (as far as I know).

Thanks! It's nice when you find the weak link in the audio chain and clean it up. So many things we can do that don't make a real difference at all. Nice to find one that did. 
 
And thanks again for clearing up the 'moving files' non-issue. I didn't think there would be a problem, but when I hear something wrong, my mind goes to "OK, what have I done since the last time it wasn't doing this?" Moving my library was on the list. 

 

[Chris J]

As I wrote that it did strike me the PWDs et al. are hardly 'top end' I guess, compared to $40,000 dacs

(start of rave - may be TL; DR)

The interesting thing about the 'science' crowd is that it isn't science. As far as I was able to determine during a deeply unsatisfactory year or so combing those forums. Those that proclaimed scientific principles and 'facts' the loudest seemed in general to have no idea that Aristotle's science (deductively based) gave way to Galileo (hey, how about we perform the experiment to check whether our deduction from current theory actually works? Before we say anything?) many centuries ago

A good deal of my scientific work includes measurement of ambiguous stimuli, similar to what we on head-fi use our ears for

Reliable metrics with good predictive validity are routinely developed in many scientific fields. That the listening we do as audiophiles might also have real validity seems supported by anecdotal evidence that we can meaningfully share impressions and find we frequently agree. I haven't tried to model this statistically; there would be ethical and other issues to setting up a real study on head-fi. (But a simulation to test assumptions is a real possibility). The other frequent gripe - poor aural memory - is true as far as it goes but ignores real-world fact about how memory actually works (chunking and the role of language).

As a statistician as well as researcher my best guess is the agreement occurs well above chance and with good 'effect size'.

In other words, there is a point to head-fi and its reviews such as yours (HC, Prep et al), Purrin's group, Project86's, Skylab's and others. We're not just a social club after all

(end of rave)

Sorry for the O.T. - er, where was I?

 
Massive +1 Brilliant!

 

[alancohen]

Just as a follow up. I've been doing some combing myself and it appears this is a bonafide issue. Here's what Gordon Rankin had to say:
 
You should never use a USB hard drive with a USB DAC. The pure amount of synchronous data transfer over one link is too much for the computer to handle.

It is always best to keep the hard drive on say a Firewire link and the dac on the USB link for best results. Another idea which is even better is to use an eSATA II link from your computer to the external drives.

Thanks
Gordon
 
 
This is the thread where I found it:
 
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f7-disk-storage-music-library-storage/asynchronous-usb-dac-external-usb-hdd-%3D-problem-3487/
 
Lots of good tidbits there. 
 
So there are plenty of nice workarounds for USB DACs, but it's hard to work around anything that you didn't know existed in the first place. 
 
Given the new popularity of USB DACs and the prevalence of USB external storage devices, I wonder how many people have their systems set up this way. Could I be the only numb skull? 

 

[Happy Camper]

Just as a follow up. I've been doing some combing myself and it appears this is a bonafide issue. Here's what Gordon Rankin had to say:

You should never use a USB hard drive with a USB DAC. The pure amount of synchronous data transfer over one link is too much for the computer to handle.




It is always best to keep the hard drive on say a Firewire link and the dac on the USB link for best results. Another idea which is even better is to use an eSATA II link from your computer to the external drives.




Thanks


Gordon



This is the thread where I found it:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f7-disk-storage-music-library-storage/asynchronous-usb-dac-external-usb-hdd-%3D-problem-3487/

Lots of good tidbits there. 

So there are plenty of nice workarounds for USB DACs, but it's hard to work around anything that you didn't know existed in the first place. 

Given the new popularity of USB DACs and the prevalence of USB external storage devices, I wonder how many people have their systems set up this way. Could I be the only numb skull? 

I'm set up the same. I only use one drive at a time but apparently that's not good. I'll have to find a USB/firewire cable and give it a try to see if there is a difference in sound.

 

[preproman]

Quote:

I'm set up the same. I only use one drive at a time but apparently that's not good. I'll have to find a USB/firewire cable and give it a try to see if there is a difference in sound.

 
 
What's a USB/Firewire cable?  Your laptop doesn't have a firewire input IIRC,  Does your external hard drive have a Firewire output?. 

 

[Happy Camper]

What's a USB/Firewire cable?  Your laptop doesn't have a firewire input IIRC,  Does your external hard drive have a Firewire output?. 

No, the drive is USB. The Sony has one 4 pin firewire connection. I thought I had one. I'll have to get back with you on this.

Update- You are right, no firewire on this laptop. I have several USB adapters including an RJ-45, 4&6pin firewire but of no use. :mad:

 

[alancohen]

Quote:

I'm set up the same. I only use one drive at a time but apparently that's not good. I'll have to find a USB/firewire cable and give it a try to see if there is a difference in sound.

There are a few workarounds. Most music player software have a "memory play" feature, where it retrieves the file to computer RAM prior to playing it back. This only takes a second and the delay is hardly noticeable and eliminates the synchronous conflict. 
 
Another way to tell if your system is experiencing a degradation is just to play the same file from your external HD and a copy on your computers HD and see if you can hear a difference. 
 
I haven't used a PC in a while, but you can also go into the device hardware profiles and see if both your DAC and USB HD share the same USB bus controller. Some computers have multiple bus controllers. 
 
This issue also presents another plus for JKs battery power supply. You can still use a spare USB port to power the DAC without issue, since the battery is segregated via shunt from the DAC. Other DACs that pull their power supply live off the USB bus while music is playing could have an issue.