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

I am wondering what effect (if any) something like JRiver, where the music can be delivered to and played back from the computer's memory, would have on things.

(I am following this thread with great interest, but I must admit that I find I am confused about a lot of it.)

Edit: It just dawned on me that the data would still have to go from the computer to the DAC. Duh.

 

Music is always played from memory. If you mean buffering the whole track to memory before playback, you can try this in foobar, which is free. I find this annoying since it can cause lag between tracks while the file is loaded.

 

bits are bits, even when flipped -- seriously though, cool stuff on these measurements. USB tho...

 

Just skimmed through this whole thread. I'm reminded of a time about 8 years ago I went to a series of introductory lectures on ordinal analysis. The conclusion of the final talk was some advice for anything thinking of getting involved in the area - "Don't do it, it's a waste of your time and energy" - and a final slide which was just a Nietzsche quote in massive letters "For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you". Maybe that should be added in big flashing letters to the FAQ at the start of the thread

In any case, I have a Gungnir Multibit/Mjo2/modded HD650 setup which I have no desire to change for a long time, and have been looking for something proportionate to get a good source signal into it (right now it's just fed by a DX90 I have lying around). For anyone with a PCI (not PCIe) slot, seems like the RME HDSP9632 ticks the right boxes (LINK). Transformer-coupled SPDIF coax and AES/EBU. Fair bit cheaper than the Lynx in this part of the world, and there's heaps of them second hand on ebay. I just picked one up for like 200USD. Will report back with comparos in due course.

 

The playback software knows what the next track is and should be smart enough to preload it while the current one is playing but of course if you alter the order (like with skipping forward or whatever) there will be slightly more lag as even lossless music files are comparitively small unless you're doing 8x upsampling or dsd conversion or something.

 

I think amongst the various PCI-E audio interface with AES output, this is the most cost effective:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/547558-REG/Digigram_VB1914A0201_VX222e_PCIe.html

It has included breakout cable unlike the Lynx which does not include. RME is more expensive than these two.

 

I also have ulterior motives - the RME card is also reputed to have a real good MIDI port. Anyone who thinks USB audio is bad should take a look at the total shit shower that is trying to get a MIDI signal out of a PC with jitter of <10ms.

 

I saw that card and was wondering about it. Is it any good?

New, $580 is still not cheap for that card.

You can find them used on EBay for $200+ or even cheaper when the breakout cable is missing. (You can buy a new AES breakout cable for $45)
The older PCI cards are really cheap. I wonder how they compare.

 

Amen, midi can go to hell. Drives me crazy when I'm messing around with my keyboard. I learned on a piano, there wasn't much lag on my teacher's Steinway.

If you find a working Mobo with a PCI slot, tell me, I have some old hardware from the bad old days I want to play with.

On a serious note, the big problem I have is that my gaming pc is my music pc. If I use onboard audio or an internal card without shielding, I can hear the frame buffer or something. It changes with the frame rate, sounds wonky. I gave up on internal solutions a while ago because of that.

 

Fun fact, with an acoustic piano you still have a delay of about 2-3ms given your ears are about 2-3 feet away from the strings.

 

Friendly bump. I'm not trying to be a dick by reposting my question, but I realized that I probably posted at a bad time because there was another active conversation taking place in the thread, and my question may have gotten buried. Any thoughts on this?

Also, just in case anybody thinks I'm getting my priorities out of order, I'm not thinking of buying the Lynx E22 before getting an Yggdrasil. I'm just genuinely interested in knowing more about the technology in this setup and filing information away for the future.

 

Yep its good. IMO its equal to the Rednet D16 that I tried back in June of this year. Its better than any usb solution I have tried to date. I was going to try out the Lynx or RME varieties but I don't see much point at their retail prices. If I see a Lynx or RME for dirt cheap I will snatch it up for comparison purposes though.

FYI, there are a lot of comparisons of Lynx and RME pci cards on Gearslutz. Most I have read ended in a draw or favoring the Lynx b/c of price/performance.

 

You know how, when you're a little kid, wandering around a church, some old guy says, "Hey kid, come and see my organ!" ?

Well, I did. And yes, it was a big one --- with, iirc, four keyboards, all the pedals and an incredible array of stops. Actually, they were still installing this monster, and were tuning some of the what'cha'call'em whistle[?] pipes. I got to crawl around up in the loft.

But I digress. What really amazed me, at the time, although I didn't have a word for it, was the lag. It was really a lot, like the guys fingers on the keyboards were a second or two ahead of the sound coming from the pipes.

Acoustic instrument. With lag. Heaps of it.

 

I think that is a legit concern. PCI express cards are probably a better fit for people who are running pure music servers that are low power and otherwise low noise. In my server I get no noise issues but again my computer has no fans, is ssd only (music is stored on my NAS), has a very low tdp processor, and an external linear power supply.

 

Thanks!

 

It takes a second to spin up the ol' turbine and for all the valves to activate when you press a key

 

This product warrants more investigation:

Dante to AES(24/96 max)
http://www.atterotech.com/products/dante-aes-o/

Not sure about price or anything else.

edit: found price: $599
http://www.performanceaudio.com/item/attero-tech-undaes-o-dante-to-aes3-bridge/58751/

user manual:
https://www.atterotech.com/downloads/docs/manuals/unDAES-O-User-Manual.pdf

 

Wow...that's exactly what we need! Anyone know Atterotech's reputation?