Lynx PCIe AES interfaces: AES16 and E22

I am. Haven't compared with PCI-e, but bought the PCI version because it was dirt cheap to test the waters.
Works like a charm.
I have the Yggdrasil and to go from USB to AES with a PCIe card from Lynx would've come with a price tag that I wouldn't it is worth.
Expectation bias might still be holding me by the balls so I'm going to defer from any other comments regarding sound quality on Lynx PCI vs USB.

 

Burn the witch! Surely throwing money at the problem before you know what you're doing is the one true way- don't make St. Jude unhappy.

 

Read this, before asking any questions. All answers could be found.

http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/tc-konnekt-8-poor-mans-aes16.3215/

 

This comparison is very helpful to me. Thank you for taking the time to write this up.

 

Just an quick FYI for anyone wondering about buffering:

I bought JRiver and Sonarworks and got it up and running tonight (put the Sonarworks plugin in the JRiver plugin folder otherwise it fails...don't ask how I know).

Anyways for DSD files I need to downsample for the Gungnir Multibit and in JRiver it can do 176/24. I was having buffering issues and tried within JRiver, turning off and on Sonarworks etc.

As it turns out, I had to change my buffer from 128 up to 256, in the Lynx Mixer, when using JRiver. Interestingly, 128 worked totally fine for Foobar computing the same conversion. I don't know why but this seems to be the case for me.

 

If you open the Lynx mixer alongside with settings in JRiver and then do your buffer setting changes on the fly in JRiver, the setting should follow in the Lynx Mixer (i.e. changing buffer size in the JRiver ASIO Control Panel should render the same change in the Lynx Mixer Software).

If it looks like below, something is not working properly and might explain your issues.
They should look the same.

I'm no expert in Foobar, but I'm sure there's buffer settings there that you could check and make sure that settings are the same in the Lynx Mixer Software.

Might be something worth trying, however to my ears 128 or 256 sound exactly the same...

 

Here's my final thoughts on the Lynx AES16 PCI card.

I would like to do more comparisons on USB vs Lynx AES/XLR, but I can't see the point of postponing this any longer. There's no fatigue connected to long listening sessions anymore, it's not a case of sounding different - it's definitely better than USB.

Spoiler: My embarrassing story arriving to this point.

My background:

I was buying USB-cables, Audiophilleos, Jitterfucks and USB Power Supplies for about a year, trying to solve what I heard as a slight glare on all music. I wouldn't call it sharp and it was initially heard as a positive thing, giving the music a fast and exact signature. But after just a couple of hours that changed into becoming tiresome for my ears. Every change yielded what I thought was an improvement or a solution to this problem, but in fact they were all changes nothing else. After a few hours, the glare was back. It had become true USB nervosa and I was even leading efforts to try and convince others as well. Not good. Not good at all.

AOIP:

I finally gave up and bought a Linn Klimax DS (Renew DS/1) streamer which I first thought was the sound salvation I needed. AOIP seemed to be a much better way of transporting that digital signal. Although the digital glare was gone the music felt like it was covered in a thin layer of mud. My whole collection of music was pleasant to listen to, even the crap that has been very poorly recorded. At first I thought this was an effect of having forced myself to listen to a whole lot of USB hence being more receptacle to a different sound, but I got more and more convinced that it was a bad synergy with DAC/Headphone but also boring. At the time I had the HDVA600 and the combination unfortunately rendered boring results for me. I hesitated in selling the Klimax since this felt like round 2 of the USB nervosa; more interested in changing than listening. But then Linn launched the Katalyst upgrade and and suddenly a bunch of Renew DS/2's started to come out on the market. I decided to compare them head to head and suspected that with a price tag of about $3500-$4000 (and around $2000 as a trade-in difference) I would hear a FANTASTIC improvement. But it was completely random. I couldn't hear any difference between them at all despite long listening sessions really really trying to hear every little bit of detail, and honestly that just pissed me off. I was stuck with an expensive setup that sounded boring and even throwing more money at it wouldn't solve the problem.
I decided to offload the Klimax and just try to find a better and more affordable way of listening to music.

Enter Schiit Yggdrasil and back to USB.

With secured funding I read up on the alternatives and found a used Yggdrasil. A scary investment. New DAC unheard of. Back to USB Nervosa round 3?
Well. Kind of. Yggdrasil's USB implementation seems to be very good. But this DAC is just something else. Let's not go there in this thread. If it's in the recording, you'll hear it.

Bye bye solid state and hello sound card (?!?!):

I then sold the HDVA600 and bought the Schiit Mjolnir2. No particular reason. I just wanted to try tubes and fell for the Jason-Mike-style-of-f**k-you-marketing. And it looks good together with the Yggdrasil. A fat and hot stack of Schiit!

It could've just stopped right there. The tube tweaks I've done since then are all about that last 1%, and is more in the synergy or preference domain than in actual improvements.
But then I stumbled across this thread, found a cheap AES16 PCI card and decided to give it a try...and game over...Now read the rest.

I don't think I will keep this comparison running any longer, half-day USB, half-day Lynx style, like I've been doing for the last couple of weeks.

Chain: PC - > JRiver MC22 -> Lynx breakout cable -> AES/XLR -> Schiit Yggdrasil -> Linn Silver Balanced XLR cables -> Schiit Mjolnir2 (LM Ericsson 2C51 tubes) -> Sennheiser Stock balanced XLR -> HD800 (SuperDupont Resonator mod).

Vs. same chain as above but over Supra USB -> Teddy Pardo USB power supply -> Supra USB -> Audiophilleo 2 USB-S/PDIF converter (and different versions of this chain, excluding one or the other or both).

The sound:

Yggdrasil over USB sounds great! It has everything that I would imagine anyone being happy with. Detail, resolution, soundstage, dynamics - the lot. But it has a tension that I'm struggling with. It's not so much a glare, and it was not clear for me until buying the Lynx card. Doing the switch, tensions are immediately released and it's natural sounding like nothing I've heard before. It's the Yggdrasil...and more.
The difference is not day and night, and I've yet to prove my thoughts with some sort of blind testing. Or I'll just leave it at this and call it a day.

Conclusion:

I would never have paid the full price for a Lynx PCI-e card to use with Yggdrasil and that's all I have to compare with. I won't say anything else for other dacs and then you might want to "upgrade" , "side-grade" or whatever, to Yggdrasil before doing anything else. But at the same time I can never ever go back to USB after this.

What now? Buy expensive classical music boxes, more cigars and a new carbon wheel set to my road bike.

 

I've always had this itch to scratch : feeding my Yggdrasil through its supposedly best input, XLR AES/EBU.
All my PC's are old enough to bear PCI ports (2008 and 2012), so I just got my hands on a RME HDSP 9632 (+AO4S additionnal card) for 90 € shipped + 35 € for db25 cable adapter + 12 € XLR AES/EBU 110 ohms spdif cable...I haven't been able to resist to such a low price, I'll tell you what it's at, especially wether I hear some differences or not. When not, I'm sure it'll have been some cheap g33ky time

Ali

 

Great price on the card, congratulations. Make sure to use ASIO drivers if possible.

 

Hi,

could you show me you card's configuration : I've no sound in AES with ASIO (music bee as well), but my Yggdrasil locks at the correct frequency.
Sound's there with wasapi and directsound, but no bitperfect...

Thanks !

Ali

 

You likely need to configure your ASIO channels, unfortunately I'm not home to screenshot how to do this with MusicBee. I think Configure button next to the Output drop-down selection should bring it up, you need to change the L and R output to the correct channels.

 

Ok, found it, thanks !
Main goal achieved, sound from XLR AES/EBU to Yggdrasil with ASIO. Now assessing it...and a whole lot to understand among the tons of settings this card provides...such a n00b I am

Ali

 

Keep it simple buddy, enjoy the music.
If there's no stuttering because of too low buffer settings, you're good to go!

 

Do you have any problem of automatic buffer size change when track's sample rate also changes ?
Let's say I set it to 256 in the ASIO driver, play a 44.1 track, then I play a 88.2 track, driver sets buffer size automatically to 512, awful digital puke sound, I've to set it manually at 256 to get proper sound again.

This behaviour is completely independent from initial value (could be 64, 128, 512, 1024), but I haven't find a way to prevent this to change. Seen on MusicBee as well as Foobar with ASIO.

Any clue ?

Edit : the driver (or the players) looks like it want to keep latency steady in ms, so changing buffer size with changing sample rate. But what I need is to keep buffer size steady !

Edit #2 : how do you digigram / lynx card behave in ASIO concerning buffer size, and with which player(s) ?

Ali

 

am getting the lynx e22 soon are there any settings i'll have to configure too make it work or should it work straight out of the box? thanks

 

I've copied my posts from the previous page and this page, maybe helpful...

Remember to use the right AES-EBU connector depending on what driver you're using. For me, it's ASIO -> OUT1 -> Yggdrasil.
You'll see in the Lynx Mixer which output it's currently using for the driver you've selected.

ABOUT LATENCY:

ABOUT INSTALLING:

ABOUT JRIVER SETTINGS + LYNX MIXER ALIGNMENT:

 

I use 256, with JRiver. No issues or dropouts.

Did you check the RME forum or JRiver Interact?
I'm sure these questions have come up, and might give you a faster and more accurate answer.

 

I've done more investigations, thanks @k4rstar , RME's support and forum, and also MusicBee's forum.
Everything's working perfectly with Jriver and foobar, so it's an ASIO implementation issue in MusicBee (which uses bassasio.dll plugin). I've opened a bug report, maybe one day...

Ali

 

Back with my questions
Previously addressed by Sorrodje, but worth a shot anyway : do you know how to configure RME 9632 with daphile ? There's a lot of options (clock, sample, whatever), and I've no idea what to choose. I've made some tests, but either I've "crappy source" led lit, or no led lit for sample rate + crappy source lit, rythmic clicking from changing sample rate, etc...
And mandatory restart after any setting's change is PITA to test all the combinations.
Whoever may help...

Ali

 

This may be audio nervosa, but would there be a difference between using a thunderbolt 1 and thunderbolt 2 enclosure for the aes16e? I recently got a used aes16e with a thunderbolt enclosure and didn't realize that it was a thunderbolt 1 enclosure until after I bought it.