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

Hey Fellas,

Looking for advice on how to feed my Yggdrasil coming next week. From what I have read, USB from my MAC mini will not give me the best results. My MAC has a custom power supply and is dead quite through HD-800S's....zero hiss at low levels and quite passages. I've been told the uLink from Wyred4Sound is a good one.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Larry

PS. Zerodeefex intro to this thread had me LMAO...Dang it's funny!!! Glad to know that I can fit in cause my Yggdrasil arrives next week!

 

It's a bit of a shame, then, that all the stuff that generates the really nasty noise components in a computer come after the main power supply.

 

Oh well... I pulled the stock P/S out of the Mini so it just has a 12 volt DC jack where it use to have a the 110 AC v come in. It's ultra quiet with zero hiss.... I don't want a streamer with Ethernet...like an end point. Just a USB converter that does the Yggdrasil justice to my ears....hoping to stay under 700...

 

Then buy nothing and wait for a little bit ... good things will transpire ...

 

Torq,

Thanks much for your advice....I really appreciate it! I am hoping that it blows away the DAC in my Oppo HA-1!!! That probably goes without saying!

 

This is so true.
Even so the SMPS itself does make a substantial contribution and if the experiments I've done thus far can be extrapolated, and I do think they can be, then any reduction in all of this spurious noise can lead to an improvement in SQ.

How much improvement and the relative cost/performance gains are another issue and one that is dependent upon a great many other factors all of which seem to be highly situationally dependent.
Which in turn can help to explain the varying reports of the degrees of impact that different folks are reporting.

Even so it seems that the reduction of any of this 'nasty' noise and the pseudo random injection of all of these really fast noise spikes I'm seeing, do help, it's just a matter of by how much.

JJ

 

hello everyone, second post here hope it's the right place! after reading so much valuable info here, I decided to get myself an Aries to connect to my Yggdrasil. I have a simple question - how do I connect my NUC with Roon to the Aries? via USB or do I connect both via ethernet/switch?
thanks!

 

Via ethernet.

 

thanks, so both connected to a switch, correct?

 

Typically if you're using a router supplied by your ISP it doubles as a switch already.

 

Sure, daisy chaining three streamers must do something magical to your music... As for Darko DAC index, I suspect price - place in the rankings correlation is a bit too close to 1 to wow me for its credibility/ objectivity.

 

He's not daisy chaining, but ranking them as streamers.

 

My bad, I didn't get the "placing between" part was meant for ranking and took it literally. My semi-morbid fascination with arm-long hifi forum signatures clearly has unintended consequences...

 

I read that one and even ordered iPower. But I am having second thoughts: how Anker battery pack can have a higher noise level than a switching power supply? Isn't loaded Anker just a battery? . I am not saying it cannot, just do not understand how.

 

The switching regulator in the battery pack isn't quiet at all. Batteries don't output 5V, but USB expects 5V.

 

Thanks, that would explain it. I means that even my primitive DIY power supply for RPi 3 that uses 7805 voltage regulator could be less noisy than Anker. I checked the spec and 7805, 7809, 7812 are linear, and indeed they generate a lot of heat. Still undecided if iFi iPower is worth it.

 

iFi power is a simple solution that is space and cost effective. It's not for outright performance, but for good enough. Just like RPi based solutions. Full on pimped linear PSUs strike me as something you'd want to pick for more expensive interfaces. Horses for courses.

 

With the added benefit that it's electrically quieter than a number of very much more expensive LPS offerings and, being external, any radiated noise is isolated from what it's feeding.

 

Do you know of some secret plan at Schiit to add an AOIP/Dante module or similar internally to the Yggdrasil?!
I would love to see something like happen...as long as they plan on passing it down to my Gungnir Multibit eventually