[BrotherKathos]

You should get 195kHz via quality toslink

yea 24/192 is the limit for both spdif and toslink to my knowledge. I was surprised to see that i still get dsd though. i like converting everything to dsd as for some reason in my mind i believe it smoothes things out a bit as well with my d50. probably just my imagination.

 

[439598]

Has anyone here used any of the other digital inputs besides the usb? I decided to give the optical input a try and feel that the sound quality is much better than usb. It takes some of the glare off the top and gives the dac more of a soft and spacious sound. I'm actually using an Emotiva Big ego usb dac that converts the signal to toslink via a wireworld nova cable. I have not tried the spdif input with the d50 though. I saw on the audio-science site that spdif measured worse than usb, but maybe that is only in a perfect world scenario and not in real world use like my computer's dirty usb? The optical cable does a nice job of keeping any ground noise out. Pretty happy with this result especially since I picked up the big ego for $66 on clearance, and especially since the big ego will pass dsd as dop through the optical out.

Agreed , the optical input is good on this just like you described,im surprised opt can sound this good. The XMOS USB interface is a very good one too though, USB is capable of good resolution but noise and glare can be an issue (still not sure if optical masks these problems or only USB suffers from this), there many directions you can go to address these issues. A free trick you can try is covering the 5V pin on the PC side of the USB cable with a piece of tape, also try finding a very short USB cable from a good brand like belkin to minimize interference

 

[carlmart]

A free trick you can try is covering the 5V pin on the PC side of the USB cable with a piece of tape, also try finding a very short USB cable from a good brand like belkin to minimize interference

What would that tape trick be for? Isolation from what?

 

[BrotherKathos]

What would that tape trick be for? Isolation from what?

the power noise from the pc usb hub. if you take it over it just leaves the data and ground pins. a more expensive option would be getting an ifi idefender. spend $50 or cut a piece of tape hehe.

 

[carlmart]

There's a much much better option for that. Take a good quality USB cable, preferably a gold plated OTG for the tests, and cut the +5v wire.

That's also a very good trick when your DAC only accepts USB power interface. On that case you then connect a proper linear supply.

 

[DjBobby]

Just received my D50 after long hibernation at the customs. Pleasantly surprised with the sound, particularly with the soundstage when used with an external LPS.
Only one question: using MacbookPro - Audirvana 3+ is showing 32 bit when playing Redbook 44.1, but falls always down to 24bit whenever the resolution goes higher to 96 or 192Khz. Any explanations?

 

[439598]

MESSED UP

 

[439598]

Here is a pretty crazy experiment from today, combining best aspects of D50 and UDA38.
For UDA38 that would be superior DAC chip and TCXO dac clock (though the TXCO looks big and fancy may not actually perform better than the D50s XO), for the D50 it would be IV and output stage.
Its destructive but fixable for the UDA with a couple cut traces and reversible for D50 (but on the risky side).
Just needs a couple wires to connect the 9038Pro chip outputs to the IV stage in the D50, only the amplifiers have power in the D50 which is the dual 16V supply (can confirm 16V sounds a bit better than 12V to my ears, plus replacing ceramic and tantalum caps with polypropylene helped a bit too).
I did this because there was very good chance it would sound better than either the UDA or D50 on their own and it absolutely does, sounds really fantastic. Its modding to absolute extreme but I only need 1 DAC and they were already too heavily modified to sell so why not.

 

[carlmart]

Can you explain a bit better on what you did on each DAC and why?

 

[439598]

Can you explain a bit better on what you did on each DAC and why?

not really, its simply taking ESS9038Pro chip output from UDA38 into the D50 OPA1612 based IV stage for better sound.

 

[carlmart]

Oh! OK.

In this way you got a better sound than from the D50 itself?

 

[439598]

Oh! OK.

In this way you got a better sound than from the D50 itself?

Better performance yes, though it sounds more like the UDA38 than the D50.

 

[spacequeen7]

Better performance yes, though it sounds more like the UDA38 than the D50.

What you mean by "better performance" .iirc your DAC was tested @ Audio Since Review and it failed miserably ,you keep bring in up that UDA38 ,maybe be you should sell D50 and keep the one you like ?

 

[carlmart]

What you mean by "better performance" .iirc your DAC was tested @ Audio Since Review and it failed miserably ,you keep bring in up that UDA38 ,maybe be you should sell D50 and keep the one you like ?

If I'm not wrong there was some hot discussion when a Schitt DAC was reviewed there too, and there was a lot of people complaining about Amirm's review. Some even say that is "strange" that only Topping models get the best reviews from him.

Maybe it's just gossip, but are there any other UDA38 reviews that confirm Amirm's review bad results?

 

[BattousaiX26]

Anyone compared d50 to the Chord Mojo?