Sound Card vs DAC

[richidoo]

He lives!      Hope you're feeling well Bry

[mgalusha]

He lives!      Hope you're feeling well Bry

+1 on that! Glad to see you are up and around enough to post Bryan.

[machinehead]

I agree with jbny. The usb spdif interface, ex. Ressonessence Concero, reduces jitter significantly and will make an older DAC perform phenomenally.

[JBNY]

Why convert to SPDIF?  If you already have it in a format where you can trust the impedance, then stay there, or swap to i2s.

Bryan

If your USB is also in your DAC you would think converting is not worth the effort, but in many older DACs with a USB connector, the USB implementation was not the best. Some of the newer USB-SPDIF converters are really much much better, that even though you are adding an additional step, the sound ends up being better than if you just went USB straight to the DAC on an older unit.

I have a a W4S DAC1 that, a few months ago, had to be sent back for warranty repair on a bad RCA jack. While it was there I asked them to upgrade the USB module to 24/192, they told me not to bother and buy their µlink USB to SPDIF converter, it is cheaper, sounds better, has more features, and has better hardware support. I did, and it does sound better than using the USB on the DAC, and that DAC is only a year and a half old.

[DaveC]

Yup, I just upgraded my Schiit Bifrost to the latest USB board, the old one was asynch 24/192 and even so, the new one is MUCH better, like getting a new DAC. I really like the idea of modular, upgradeable DACs, better to do a $100 upgrade then sell the old one to buy a new one.

[richidoo]

Esoteric apparently purchased the HiFace product, or maybe the whole M2Tech company? I don't know. But they are now selling the improved HiFace2, which is USB Audio 2.0 compliant and some other major improvements over the original. I thought the original HiFace adapter sounded excellent. The new one is $259 at Amazon.  It has it's own clocks which make it "asynchronous" from the PC.

[bpape]

Understand - just saying that the SPDIF interface is inherently flawed so possibly even a less than optimal USB is better than an 'optimized' (yet still flawed) SPDIF?

Bryan

[JBNY]

I originally thought the same thing. I can only use my experience, the USB on board doesn't sound as good as the newer USB converter. Same company the only real difference is a few years of technology advancements. I don't think that a good USB on board is not as good as a USB converter (new DACs with onboard USB are probably better), rather that the technology seems to be advancing with USB quick enough that the on board USB might be outdated quickly. Buying a USB converter can make it a little easier on the wallet if you want to upgrade without having to buy a new DAC, that's all.

Hope that makes sense.

[rollo]

Brian glad to see you back. Joe and the rest thanks for all the input, learned a lot here.
    Maybe it is time to check out the computer thing. Joe feel like doing a demo ?


charles

[JBNY]

Maybe it is time to check out the computer thing. Joe feel like doing a demo ?

Sure thing Charles, I'm out in Port Jeff, PM or email me if you want to come over some time. To say I have a little bit of computer gear hooked into the main system would be not quite accurate, I have a lot.

[bhobba]

I have mucked around with computer audio a lot.

In my experience using internal cards is BAD - inside the computer is inherently noisy and that causes problems.  Even external converters has issues with hash and other stuff travelling down cables but internal is HORRID.

Forget Firewire - technically it is good and maybe a bit better than USB in principle but the Wiess Firewire converter I heard was soundly trounced by my Off-Ramp.  In practice USB is the way to go because of the very large number of converters available and Firewire does not show USB a clean pair of heels by any stretch of the imagination.

I2S is better but you need short connections to really make that sing, which means it should be internally mounted if possible.  I did an experiment with my Off-Ramp fed via an I2S cable and an internal battery powered M2Tech board directly feeding the DAC chip.  Now at a technical level the Off-Ramp is better in every way than the M2Tech and we expected it to easily best the M2Tech.  Not so - it was about the same - the Off-Ramp was slightly smoother, but the M2Tech seemed to reveal more detail.  Of course to get to the bottom of it for sure a lot more work would need to be done but it seems likely the short paths were lifting the M2Tech.

OK - whats the bottom line here?  If you can find a DAC that does I2S internally that's the way to go.  Just because its internal don't assume its I2S - most arent - most in fact use SPDIF.  I only know two that do and both those DAC's are pretty pricey.  In fact most internal USB implementations are BAD - an external unit via SPDIF usually easily bests them.  If you can find an I2S DAC and it has a connector that matches a USB converter - then use that.  But they are few and far between as well - I only know of a couple as well.

In practice you are limited to an external unit using SPDIF.  I have heard quite a few of those and the two best are the Audiophellio or Off-Ramp.  Value for money its the Audiophellio - but if you want the best its the Off-Ramp.  Although I have not heard it a Berkeley Alpha converter when fed using direct and integer mode from a player that supports it (most don't - Only Audirvana on a Mac to the best of my knowledge does this) has the edge over the Off-Ramp.  Without that I have compared the two (ie not using this special mode of Audirvana which is only a recent thing) and the Off-Ramp is better.

Thanks
Bill

[bpape]

I'm not advocating doing the D/A conversion in the PC on a card by any stretch. I'm actually saying to NOT do any conversion in the PC. If you leave it as USB, then use something like the Empirical products to tame that USB conncection outside the box, THEN do the conversion step, you can have the best of both worlds, never incur an impedance mismatch, etc.

Bryan

[rollo]

Maybe it is time to check out the computer thing. Joe feel like doing a demo ?

Sure thing Charles, I'm out in Port Jeff, PM or email me if you want to come over some time. To say I have a little bit of computer gear hooked into the main system would be not quite accurate, I have a lot.

  You have a deal. Thanks. I am very curious as to how the computer/DAC combo works. A tutorial is exactly what I need.  Maybe after the demo we could compare a reference quality CDP to the computer set up.



charles
 

[JBNY]

Maybe it is time to check out the computer thing. Joe feel like doing a demo ?

Sure thing Charles, I'm out in Port Jeff, PM or email me if you want to come over some time. To say I have a little bit of computer gear hooked into the main system would be not quite accurate, I have a lot.

  You have a deal. Thanks. I am very curious as to how the computer/DAC combo works. A tutorial is exactly what I need.  Maybe after the demo we could compare a reference quality CDP to the computer set up.
 

Absolutely, I've got a pretty good vinyl rig too. So it's always nice to compare vinyl to digital as well. More is always better!