CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Head Amps, DACs, Sources, Portable Equipment Discussion => Topic started by: Anaxilus on September 20, 2015, 02:27:29 AM
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More to come!
Lynx E22 (AES output)
(http://www.lynxstudio.de/shop/images/lynx_e44_board.jpg)
JCAT (plus AMB LPS)
(http://jplay.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/JCAT_USB_CARD.jpg)
Uptone USB Regen
(http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0660/6121/products/UpTone_REGEN_PCB1.1_for_web_1024x1024.jpg?v=1438874287)
Schiit Wyrd
(http://schiit.com/public/upload/general/wyrd_pcb_front.jpg)
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Finally someone bothered popcorn
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I see sotm and Paul pang usb cards mentioned a lot on CA, could be good to include them
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I see sotm and Paul pang usb cards mentioned a lot on CA, could be good to include them
Yep. JCAT seems like the most full-on version of the SOTM and Paul Pang style though (I believe Paul Pang designed the JCAT card) so if the JCAT ends up impressing perhaps he can do a follow-up.
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make sure to install jitterbugs in all open ports when testing pls )(
also, since your doing this, mind grabbing one of the new ifi iusb 3.0?
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also, since your doing this, mind grabbing one of the new ifi iusb 3.0?
Not unless someone has one to send in. I already had to give Lynx my gall bladder as a deposit.
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No gallbladder for a while............., I guess you will be adopting a low fat diet for a while and residence near the can :)
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No gallbladder for a while............., I guess you will be adopting a low fat diet for a while and residence near the can :)
Not unless someone has one to send in. I already had to give Lynx my gall bladder as a deposit.
if you contact ifiand tell them who you are and what your doing they will likely just send you a review unit
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Looking forward to reading this! Sadly I sold off my wyrd before I bought my Yggy.
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Any chance we could add say something from the Creative series (say ZXR) and the Asus STX II?
Kind of curious if the audiophile/gaming hybrids even compete especially since they both allow opamp swaps.
If needed, I could send you the stock cards one at a time (I need 1 of them for my headphones) hahah.
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if you contact ifiand tell them who you are and what your doing they will likely just send you a review unit
Oh, my reputation for not usually handing out free cookies precedes me.
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We all know Jude bought 3 of them. Don't be stingy and send one. :)p2
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Any chance we could add say something from the Creative series (say ZXR) and the Asus STX II?
Kind of curious if the audiophile/gaming hybrids even compete especially since they both allow opamp swaps.
If needed, I could send you the stock cards one at a time (I need 1 of them for my headphones) hahah.
Any particular reason why? These are for digital output to a standalone DAC. I'm not interested in driving headphones with a sound card. Been there, done that.
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Any particular reason why? These are for digital output to a standalone DAC. I'm not interested in driving headphones with a sound card. Been there, done that.
I believe some of them have Optical or Coax outputs on them. My old Creative xtreme music had coax output on it, but it probably sucks.
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Both cards I mentioned have digital outs for DAC connection.
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Both cards I mentioned have digital outs for DAC connection.
I only saw optical on the Creative which I'll just dismiss out of hand tbh. I couldn't see what the Asus had. If it has coax and you want a comparison, I'll add it for sure.
ZXR:
I/O Ports (Main Card):
Headphone : 1 x Amplified 1/4" jack
Speaker Out : 2x RCA (L / R) 2x 3.5mm jacks (Rear, C/Sub)
Microphone In: 1x 1/4" jack
I/O Ports (Daughter Card):
Line In : 2x RCA (L / R)
Optical Out : 1x TOSLINK
Optical In : 1x TOSLINK
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Yep, the ZxR only has optical.
I still have my X-Fi Titanium HD because it has both optical and coax out.
I probably would've sold off my ZxR by now if the DBpro wasn't so good at measuring amps and dacs. It sounds very good for a sound card, but it sounds exactly the same as the X-Fi Titanium HD.
You live in OC, right? If so, I'd be happy to hand off the X-Fi Titanium HD to you for the testing.
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The Asus Essence STX II has coax. The only reason why I would like it added is because I am kind of curious as a gamer does it make the most sense to have a 2nd sound card or could one card be used for both audiophile and gaming applications.
Let me know if you need one and I'll send out mine once I get it.
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Finally someone bothered popcorn
Only half way. Really bothering would be checking out the analogue out from high-end PCI cards (yes! Ignoring the dogma!). I'd put my money on Lynx, if I had enough.
The trouble is, it is damned hard to find a simply 2-channel analogue I/O card these days. The market has gone. Juli@.
I had an RME, that I loved. Now it makes funny noises in the highs. Well, like sound-card, like owner, I suppose.
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Yep. JCAT seems like the most full-on version of the SOTM and Paul Pang style though (I believe Paul Pang designed the JCAT card) so if the JCAT ends up impressing perhaps he can do a follow-up.
I don't think PP had any direct hand in the design of the JCAT USB card. The JCAT USB, LAN, and SATA cables are all directly based off of Paul's own cables, but I think the JCAT USB card was a development between the JPlay devs setting down what they wanted, and Adnaco doing the actual engineering work.
Paul's own USB card is based on a largely off the shelf USB card which he then heavily modifies with an external power input and clock.
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In my experience, consumer level gaming soundcards are pretty meh. Better than straight motherboard optical and coaxial digital outputs sure, but not by all that much.
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I had an RME
I had one too. It was bested by a freakin' Yulong D100 in D-A.
I never got to try its digital outs (dogma here) other than to D100. It did make it sound slightly better.
Anax could you throw in something like a Raspery Pi or similar with LPS or battery juice?
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RE: X-Fi Titanium HD
Nevermind, it has mini-TOSLINK, not an RCA out.
And now I'm adding my Creative Sound Blaster ZxR and X-Fi Titanium HD to my For Sale list. Gotta get rid of something before the 1st.
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In my experience, consumer level gaming soundcards are pretty meh. Better than straight motherboard optical and coaxial digital outputs sure, but not by all that much.
Sure, but how does such a card compare to a decent, external DAC? It would be a nice question to have some definite answers to. For example, how does an STX/STXII's (pretty much a "top of the line" consumer internal sound card) analog out compare to, say, a Modi 2's when fed to a decent amplifier to drive the headphones?
At least on paper it has more than competitive specs... but that doesn't guarantee anything, considering the SMPS noise and multi-GHz noisy environment inside a typical PC case that an external DAC doesn't suffer as much, if at all from.
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I don't think PP had any direct hand in the design of the JCAT USB card. The JCAT USB, LAN, and SATA cables are all directly based off of Paul's own cables, but I think the JCAT USB card was a development between the JPlay devs setting down what they wanted, and Adnaco doing the actual engineering work.
Paul's own USB card is based on a largely off the shelf USB card which he then heavily modifies with an external power input and clock.
Yep yep, you're right. Adnaco it was. I'm curious because JPlay seems like such nonsense but the card gets love. Costs quite a bit more than the SotM. I feel like I could stomach the SotM cost, not so much Jplay. Too many other weak points in my chain.
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Sure, but how does such a card compare to a decent, external DAC? It would be a nice question to have some definite answers to. For example, how does an STX/STXII's (pretty much a "top of the line" consumer internal sound card) analog out compare to, say, a Modi 2's when fed to a decent amplifier to drive the headphones?
At least on paper it has more than competitive specs... but that doesn't guarantee anything, considering the SMPS noise and multi-GHz noisy environment inside a typical PC case that an external DAC doesn't suffer as much, if at all from.
Lynx, RME, and that sort of stuff, is "top of the line."
But yes, it is quite possible that it is my biases talking there. But those companies do sell to pros.
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The Asus Essence STX II has coax. The only reason why I would like it added is because I am kind of curious as a gamer does it make the most sense to have a 2nd sound card or could one card be used for both audiophile and gaming applications.
Let me know if you need one and I'll send out mine once I get it.
Sure, let's do that. I've never actually messed around with the Asus cards.
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At least on paper it has more than competitive specs... but that doesn't guarantee anything, considering the SMPS noise and multi-GHz noisy environment inside a typical PC case that an external DAC doesn't suffer as much, if at all from.
Paper specs are very easy, and there's a million ways to game them to your advantage. I've never heard any Soundblaster or Asus or whatever that's even been competitive with a low-end M-Audio studio card. That's not what they're made for.
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Yep yep, you're right. Adnaco it was. I'm curious because JPlay seems like such nonsense but the card gets love. Costs quite a bit more than the SotM. I feel like I could stomach the SotM cost, not so much Jplay. Too many other weak points in my chain.
I haven't done any direct comparisons, but several folks have reported that JCAT > Adnaco > SoTM, so take that for whatever it's worth. I can tell you that in order to make the JCAT really worthwhile, a dedicated box preferably with dual linear power supplies is pretty much a must. The JCAT just plugged into an otherwise standard PC being fed off an ATX PSU is likely to lose to something like the Uptone Regen or iUSB3.0, at least that would be my guess.
As for the JPlay software, some people really like it, but I've never really understood the idea of paying all that money, plus paying even more money for Win Server 2012 if you want to go "extreme" with it, paying still more money for the Win Server Optimizer, and then running TWO computers, one for control, and the other to operate in hibernate mode. All of that to fix Windows? Why don't I just not use Windows?
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Lynx, RME, and that sort of stuff, is "top of the line."
Supposedly the Merging Tech Mykerinos was the "God card" for computer audiophiles, but that was back when computer audiophiles were still using sound cards. I believe that Merging now only makes interface cards for connection with their external hardware. Cramming everything onto a PCB small enough to be able to work on a PCI-e slot really isn't practical anymore, and so the single card Lynx and RME stuff should really be considered more "entry level" by studio standards. They have a few cards which use several expansion slots for additional I/O, but most serious studios are likely to be using rack mount external hardware with interface cards.
http://www.merging.com/uploads/assets/Merging_pdfs/Brochures/HorusBrochure-2015.pdf
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Paper specs are very easy, and there's a million ways to game them to your advantage. I've never heard any Soundblaster or Asus or whatever that's even been competitive with a low-end M-Audio studio card. That's not what they're made for.
Creative I know is on the HF boards and Asus has been competing with Creative for quite some time. They both claim their cards as being more audiophile centric but also for gaming as well. Do I think that they care about jitter or low noise? More than likely not on the level JCAT or SoTM do but I think we should add them and who knows maybe the results will shock everyone (not likely but here's a vodka on the rocks in hopes it does).
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Creative I know is on the HF boards and Asus has been competing with Creative for quite some time. They both claim their cards as being more audiophile centric but also for gaming as well. Do I think that they care about jitter or low noise? More than likely not on the level JCAT or SoTM do but I think we should add them and who knows maybe the results will shock everyone (not likely but here's a vodka on the rocks in hopes it does).
"Claim" is the operative word there. I've certainly got no problem with them being in the group, any device with a coaxial digital output is a worthwhile data point. All I can say is that from my own experience, if a standard Realtek motherboard digital output grades an "F," consumer level soundcard digital outputs would range from "D-" to "D+."
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make sure to use a linear powered CD rip (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/linear-powered-rips-and-flash-drives-sound-better-alex-was-right-22116/) with that JCAT USB card :-DD
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I am super interested in how the Asus Essence STX II does. It uses TCXO and has coax out, so it could be legit.
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make sure to use a linear powered CD rip (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/linear-powered-rips-and-flash-drives-sound-better-alex-was-right-22116/) with that JCAT USB card :-DD
WTF, one of the dudes in that thread is talking about linear supplies for his HDDs. That has to be stupidly complicated.
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WTF, one of the dudes in that thread is talking about linear supplies for his HDDs. That has to be stupidly complicated.
Nope, on the contrary.
Simply unplug the power connection to the HD and insert a cable coming from a linear power supply.
Whether or not that will 'help' anything I leave up to others.
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WTF, one of the dudes in that thread is talking about linear supplies for his HDDs. That has to be stupidly complicated.
Ideally you'd want to have whatever music is in your playlist completely in ram during playback. If there's no data coming from the hdd while music is playing, there should be no need for a LPS for it.
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make sure to use a linear powered CD rip (http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/linear-powered-rips-and-flash-drives-sound-better-alex-was-right-22116/) with that JCAT USB card :-DD
I always wondered if any switching power supply noise, noise from a ground plane or RFI traveling down a usb cable could end up modulated in a data file.
Nope, on the contrary.
Simply unplug the power connection to the HD and insert a cable coming from a linear power supply.
Whether or not that will 'help' anything I leave up to others.
I wonder if folks will start using jitterbugs on their HDD USB ports.
I took the approach of sending the data over ethernet but I suspect the router may have it's own noise issues similar to a drive.
Ideally you'd want to have whatever music is in your playlist completely in ram during playback. If there's no data coming from the hdd while music is playing, there should be no need for a LPS for it.
Unless your player does not load an entire playlist. What about any power or ground plane noise traveling along the USB ground to the computer, would that go away while the drive sleeps?
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Ideally you'd want to have whatever music is in your playlist completely in ram during playback.
Never been sure that is an ideal. Yes, if you get interruptions while the data is sent for from the hard disk, but, no interruptions, no need. But hey, audiophilia.
Consider how much slower an optical drive is than an HDD, and yet, PCs do actually, although we don't often admit it (or even actually need it) play music from their CD drives, just fine.
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I always wondered if any switching power supply noise, noise from a ground plane or RFI traveling down a usb cable could end up modulated in a data file.
It won't 'stored' be in the DATA FILE for sure beacuse it can't, there is no mechanism for it.
Bits in a file are just a representation of '1' not 0.8563 or 1.1375 (fictional numbers used for illustration) as a file ONLY knows '1' or '0' (so not 0.2654 + some time offset or whatever).
There is NO timing info stored in a file other than a byte which says what the data-rate is.
This does NOT mean that the analog waveform that is reproduced by a converter cannot have amplitude or timing issues nor that 'digital or analog' noise cannot make it in the analog signal.
That is NOT in any way related to the DATA FILE but is caused by limits and variations occuring by physical properties of certain components in 'the chain'.
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That agrees with my logic as well, I was just wondering what people might be hearing. Cheers
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That agrees with my logic as well, I was just wondering what people might be hearing. Cheers
The theory is that the problem is not in the data file (ie bits and bytes) but rather in the timing of the (recovered) clock signal.
There are several theories explaining how 'jitter' could be induced in all kinds of ways which basically is a timing issue.
It is believed that much smaller amounts of jitter are audible than established through 'tests' done in the past.
As far as I can see even the USB input of the Yggy (which is exemplary in jitter rejection !) can still improve audibly using miracle devices (acc to some) while it is already at an incredibly low 2.7ps p-p and an inaudibly low -150dB.
audible 'improvements' have not been backed up with any plots. This cannot be done with a simple sound card anyway.
Personally I am DAC-deaf (unless the FR differences reach audible thresholds) so, fortunately for me, I can't hear jitter in any of my DAC's. Maybe because I don't know what to listen for.
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2.7ps p-p
How'd you arrive at that figure?
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Atomicbob's measurement...
see the pop-up box on the left.
(http://www.changstar.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2405.0;attach=9632;image)
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Unless your player does not load an entire playlist. What about any power or ground plane noise traveling along the USB ground to the computer, would that go away while the drive sleeps?
Some of the JPlay guys have Adnaco cards for their ext USB hard drives with their music on them. No direct ground path.
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Never been sure that is an ideal. Yes, if you get interruptions while the data is sent for from the hard disk, but, no interruptions, no need. But hey, audiophilia.
Consider how much slower an optical drive is than an HDD, and yet, PCs do actually, although we don't often admit it (or even actually need it) play music from their CD drives, just fine.
It has nothing to do with interruptions. When you start getting into the deep end of the pool in terms of optimizing a standard PC for audio, the idea is that having HDD I/O during playback is a source of noise, so all music in RAM, less I/O, less noise. That's part of the goal behind JPlay's hibernate mode. Once enabled, all HDD I/O stops, not just the music files, but everything. You can physically disconnect the system drive, and playback will continue.
I don't care to take things that far. VortexBox is good enough for me.
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I think that there are two possibilities: one is, as you say, something else electrical going on is a source of noise. Some people say that. The other is to do with interrupts, where buffers do not get filled because the machine is doing something else. Hearing the mouse pointer move across the screen, as the system prioritizes video over audio is not nice, and it is noise. DPC latency, if the course is not easily traceable, is an audio nightmare, It's the reason my last PC was thrown out. On a par with a flickering fluorescent light!
Although I love to rant about Windows, my initial forays into Linux audio absolutely needed a rt kernel for un-[literally]-interrupted playback with the interfaces I was using. Then the Low-Latency kernel would do. Now I'm running a generic kernel and there is never a drop out, unless I forget to fix the CPU speed adjusting thingy.
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just curious, any early thoughts on the wyrd vs regen anax?
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Looks like this isn't happening then...
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Echoing Solderdude comment above, looking at the exceptionally good measurements of GMB and Yggy from Atomicbob, it really makes me wonder how does all the jitter rejection/improvement devices work to improve these dac? Anyway all these does is to pique my interest of Anax's comparison. popcorn popcorn
Deep down of course I hope for all these to be placebo, even with money back guarantee of some of these tweaks, the return shipping to OEM from Asia to USA/Europe alone makes me :-[ :-[