[lawsonian]

Noob here. I've scoured through posts about what exactly is a DDC / master clock / reclocking / etc... It's still all over my head due to all those highly technical inner workings.

Currently, I have my lossless music in my desktop's HDD, using Audirvana to send the music over to Lumin U1 mini (with Plixir LPS) via Ethernet.

My questions:
1. Is the clock inside Lumin U1 good enough?
2. Will sound quality improve a lot if I have something like a Denafrips Gaia / Mutec MC-3 (which doesn't seem to be a DDC?) in between my Lumin u1 mini and denafrips ares 2?

What I seem to sort of understand so far:
USB cables don't carry clock signals, which means if I use a DDC, I would have to use USB and let the DDC to do its work right?

Cheers and please forgive my lack of knowledge

 

[Roseval]

USB works a bit different than legacy busses like SPDIF.
Today USB audio is most of the time async USB or better USB in isochronous mode with asynchronous synchronization.
This means the clock of the DAC runs “free”.
Basically the DAC does the buffer management and tells the PC to send more/less data.
This means that the clock runs at its intrinsic jitter, no need to adapt its speed to a source.
Theoretical the best possible protocol as the DAC is in control.
A bit more: https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/USB.html

SPDIF is a very peculiar bus.
Normally the rate of a bus is independent of the data.
In the case the send rate = sample rate and the receiver has to slave itself to the sender.
So if the sender is jittery, you have tons of input jitter.
In case of modern DACs, they employ all kind of trick boxes like ASRC to make them less dependent of the source.

My advice would be to proceed with great caution.
Try to find measurements demonstrating relevant improvements.
With relevant I mean it must make a noticeable difference at the analog out of your DAC.
Say less jitter, less IMD, etc.