USB Nervosa Thread Decrapifiers, pro interfaces, and bears oh my

Well, I think USB is a perpetual black hole of turd polishing, but that is relative. CD transports 20 years old sound better. Do we need USB, yeah, I didn't say we don't. Me, the one that is constantly asked about this "gheyness".

Like CDs killing LPs, its inevitable, but for sonics, I think vinyl still rules. For a myriad number of reasons, and I agree with not dumping computers, better USB is the near future. A newer standard is possible as well, and i never thought I would say my CDs sound good, but they do, compared to USB. What was my cost of entry? Higher than necessary for sure.
This is like porn, where its prevalence debases overall quality, , but you need it or face not listening a ton of music (Tidal, downloads, etc.). Marv's given up on us, we are a lost cause, but I can't buy mid 50s Blue Notes in good quality if I wanted to. So streaming it is, and I getting it to the level where I can enjoy it so i listen a lot is where its at.

 

@Wfojas

Laughing my ass off!

Are you really taunting me to go find a 20 year old cd transport. I still have the 400 cds in my collection sitting in boxes in the basement. Can I just run down to BuyMore and pick up a sony dvd or bluray with spdif out or do I have to find an old $3k Esoteric player with maybe failing Philips pro or Pioneer sled to worry about?

In all seriousness, I am half tempted to pull an old Pioneer DVD player out of the garage and run it spdif in to the dac to hear if it even on the same planet as a computer using usb. Nah it is hot today,

If I now have you laughing your ass off, can one actually expect to find a reliable great sounding CD transport for a few hundred clams?

 

LOL, nope. Not at Buymore, (man I miss Chuck). I only use mine cause I have it. And yeah, i did what you did. It sucks off my pioneer dvd player, too (though it was okay with a laserdisc player). I'm not sure which are inexpensive and decent, though others here have done it. Not sure what the older Thetas, Accuphase and Teacs go for these days.

Oh, and if you need someone to pick up your CDs, remember your friends over here....

 

I think bridges, reclockers, isolators etc can legitimately solve problems but there needs to be a problem in the first place.

 

I was sooooo close to pulling the trigger on a Mutec, but I've decided to just go the disc player route (Oppo BDP-103). There's not much of my music that I don't already have on CD (or DVD or Blu Ray) anyway, and most of my purchased digital music is brickwalled recent Top 40 so who cares about that. Plus for whatever reason I tend not to make much use of the available streaming services, even if paying!

Full circle for me since months ago that's what I had originally planned on doing, but was hoping I could possibly transition to solely using my MacBook to feed Gungnir Multibit. For me the disc player (with optional ALAC/FLAC from network or USB storage) is not inconvenient and I get to use 'unmolested' SPDIF.

I do hope Schiit eventually comes out with a killer USB (or even Ethernet!) module for their DACs.

 

Will you be using the Oppo to feed the Gungnir Multibit? If so, let us know if how the mac compares to the oppo as a source.

 

Who dared Jason to put out a source a while back, in a discussion of spinners? I remember how dismayed he was with the suggestion, lol.

 

I would expect the comparison to be similar to what I'm primarily using now - Toshiba HD-DVD player via coax SPDIF. Compared to MacBook vanilla USB, Tosh SPDIF provides increased depth and instrument separation, and at least for cymbals a tiny bit more accurate tonality (might be due to better separation or just my imagination ). All subtle but for me now noticeable difference. MacBook (and Sony PS3) via optical narrowed the gap vs. SPDIF, but resulted in slight reduction of low frequency energy/impact vs. SPDIF & USB.

I had good results from Raspberry Pi w/Digi+ via SPDIF as well, compared to MacBook vanilla USB/optical. But I don't mind handling discs and enjoy the video component of concert performances. (Damn you Rush for not including LPCM tracks!)

Does anyone else think it would be great if these devices were available through US-based distributors, or does it not really matter? I'm guessing it would result in a price increase...

 

Rory I thought the Yggdrasil had a gen 3 USB module with built in wyrd relocking? Or is it just a newer USB receiver chip? I vaguely remember as choir used cm6631a USB receiver chips instead of xmos

 

@uncola

which choir?

or do you mean Chord, then that would explain the so so performance of their usb section.

 

Oops I meant Schiit. It got autocorrected

 

Only autocorrect could change Schiit into Choir, hahaha, hilarious

 

Rednet D16 in the house!

Here's my chain:

Early 2012 MBP > Amarra for Tidal > DVS > Cat6 > D16 > BNC > 2Qute > ZDS > HD800S

Setup went smooth - no issues. Enjoying the music deeply. It's going to take some time to get a handle on what I'm experiencing. At first I was switching back and forth between USB but after awhile I wanted to just relax and slip away with the Rednet flow. I was worried that my old laptop wouldn't cut it, but so far so good! Getting 250usec latency on the D16, 150usec is grayed out. 10msec on DVS.

Anxiously waiting to receive the @MisterRogers uber USB source kit so I can finally hear the Mutec Magic for myself and let 'em battle along with a microrendu for good measure. Also waiting for Yggdrasil to come home and make things even more interesting!

 

USB is the minor problem. The bigger problem is the computer it's connected to. I've heard various cumouter and streaming solutions using different digital interconnect standard and all of them sucked to different degrees, beaten by CD transports. I don't mean to say give up on computers, just realise the uphill battle and not attribute blame disproportionately to USB, nor expect miracles.

 

A few folks are sticking to CD transports. I gave up on them when my really good sounding Opera Droplet CD player got beat by a lowly Macbook over 10 years ago.

If reasonable, I am willing to try one again.

Are any of these unmentioned uber sounding CD tranports under the price of a Mac Mini for example?

 

Exactly. There is a reason why Marv has a 20+ year old laser disc player as a transport. Good transports are much much harder to find than random statements like "a cd transport beats most computers" would suggest.

4 years ago when I was still spinning discs I bought, borrowed etc nearly a dozen cd players and transports in price ranges from $600 to $2000. I tried DVD players and BluRay players. I went from cd players with the vaunted Phillips CDMpro transports to those without it. Combing audiogon for super old stable platter pioneer or wadia transports. Its all too hit or miss. The only CD transport I would be confident in owning right now is the PS Audio perfect wave player -- but you are not really "spinning" discs with that thing as opposed to just storing the discs in memory (gast! a computer!). A friend of mine owns one and uses its I2S out into the Audio GD SA-2 with great success. I last heard his system this past weekend and my computer is equal to the PS Audio.

The old half width cd transports that Pacific Valve sold before they folded are probably the only sub $600 transports that might compete with your mac mini. One of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vanguard-CD...794228?hash=item3f65703d74:g:jnAAAOSwQaJXRLvh

I owned a Vanguard transport for about a month before moving on to a Lite Audio transport. One exactly like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lite-LT-1-H...878805?hash=item2ef16bf155:g:g8gAAOSwLVZV6Kca

 

My experience tells me that the method/format of digital audio is the key here.
CD transports usually use SPDIF mostly because it is the choice for consumer digital audio (Sony/Phillips Digital Interface Format).
My latest experiments tell me that AES3 format is easily superior and since both are based upon the same digital protocol but use a different hardware layer, it's these differences where the gains we seek are to be found.

And the reason why Pro-Audio developed and uses AES3 is because it is a superior Digital Audio format in both the H/W and S/W layers and was designed for their needs and use.
It can be superior to SPDIF, when implemented properly, such that SPDIF's limitations become a non-issue.

And USB was never designed/meant as a streaming audio format, that it works as well as it does is evidence of the designers creativity and reflects our willingness, as users, to experiment to discover methods of improvement.
USB is convenient and cheap and ubiquitous.
But ultimately abandoning USB is the 'best' choice, that is, if you are pursuing that last 1-5% of SQ.

There is a reason why Mike Moffett stated that the 'best' way of feeding a Yggdrasil was AES3 and was BMW'ng about spending time on designing USB solutions.

And really that is what we are talking about with all of this, gaining that last 1-5% of SQ, and really it's probably more like the last 0.1% of improvement.
The thing is when our systems become resolving 'enough' that last 0.1% looms much larger on the horizon in terms of audible rewards than the mere number alone would suggest.

JJ

 

That is the crux of why I'm shrinking my audio gear collection again. Does the Rednet 3 sound great? Absolutely. How much better is it than an internal Lynx E22 in a really well-constructed computer? 2%?

Does the Mutec MC-3+USB improve things even further if it reclocks either signal? Yep. How much? Maybe another 1-2%.

How much better is the Sonic Frontiers SFD-1 MKII than my Atlantis+? A couple percent better in some ways, even in others, a percent or two worse in others. Better overall, perhaps, but again, it's with 1-2%.

I decided to shrink down to the Lynx E22 PCIe card. It gives me a tangible improvement over USB alone (more like 5%-10%), so I'm operating around 95% of my system's best with only one piece of equipment that takes zero room because it's in my computer.

The itch will come again, I'm sure, but right now a weight is lifting off my shoulders with regard to size and expense of my setup.

 

Glad I'm not the only one who finds some of these distinctions to be microscopic

 

Since adding Rednet into the chain, I've only accrued about 4 hours of D16 listening so far on the first night and pulled myself away at 2:30am. No dropouts or latency issues. Technically, the implementation works as intended and I am able to enjoy music, primarily Tidal.

My simple setup worked very well prior to removing USB. According to Rob Watts, the 2Qute is designed to be galvanically isolated from jitter and requires the USB power leg in order to do its thing. Therefore, any remaining concern of potential noise is hopefully mitigated by virtue of running on battery power.

I'm not sure that I've experienced any USB nastiness that I'm aware of and definitely open to learning what to listen for. With the brief time I've had so far through the D16, I would describe the change in presentation as being more relaxed in terms of effort and energy expended to reproduce music. Increased volume isn't necessary, but dialing it up slightly really heightens dynamics and attack without risking ear splitting decibels. Sound seems to breathe a bit easier, notes hit impactfully and decay with more space around them. Texture is better resolved.

I could also state with confidence that the 2Qute renders music very much in the same manner through USB. I could easily revert and be happy. What I'm more excited about though is that I believe I've found the limits of the 2Qute for my use and look forward to hearing Yggdrasil.