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

I find browsers, and Flash in particular, suffer badly from memory creep and it bogs everything down.

Lately I've also had issues with Win10 wherein it seems to love doing updates or something in the background and then gets stuck in high resource usage mode without actually doing anything.

 

More likely to be the content than the browser, of which Flash is just one possibility.

 

Just picked up a used Aries (full-phat version with femto clocks and LPS). Took some encouragement (thanks Torq) but I really wanted to try it out. Primarily because all my gear sits on a rack rather than a desktop now, so I wanted a simple solution that didn't require me to put my laptop on the rack and connect via thunderbolt. Now it simply sits on the floor underneath the rack (no issue with getting a good signal, been streaming flac via tidal for a few nights now), with its weird form factor mostly hidden from view. I have it hooked to Yggdrasil via AES, and that's it. Aside from convenience, this thing sounds awesome. I'm not really missing anything vs. the Lynx e22 I had in its place for quite some time. And that's a good thing, cause Lynx vs. USB (or USB w/ decrappifiers) was night and day awesome. I don't have it anymore so can't compare side by side, but I believe @Torq compared them (possibly to Rednet too). In any case, smooth sailing so far, easy to set up, and wonderful clean, detailed and dynamic sound. Pic or it didn't happen:

 

I'm putting together a new USB chain too:

Stage 1: a USB type-A plug
Stage 2: some wire
Stage 3: a USB type-B plug

I'm not sure about the SQ, but the volume is certainly much improved with all three components in the chain.... Of course, YMMV.

 

But how many links are there going to be?

 

Nice, now we can do an Aries/ Berkeley Audio Alpha usb comparison. The original review stated that the Alpha was superior to the Lynx, and until @Torq noted that the Aries was better, i hadnt thought of this route. I didnt have a way of checking either comparisons, so this is interesting. You switch stuff fast @brencho , I saw that posting a few days ago. Oh, there's a Brooks Berdan thing today, also, if you're around.

 

@sfoclt I'd consider an Auralic Aries Femto miles before this thing (if you were seriously considering it in the first place). A true BNC out is nice but if AES is what you're after, I see little need for this thing.

Nice to see it too comes with a linear supply at least.

 

Lucky guy! Been looking for one for the last couple of weeks, no luck so far, close to caving in to new list price

 

I bet you'll be seeing more once Aries 2 releases, prices for a used Aries should be sub 900 then. I got this one for 900 shipped.

 

Guess I should keep looking, it's not as if this is in any way urgent, my current microRendu+LPS-1>SU-1 arrangement is OK if clunky in terms of wiring and space use.

 

I've been suffering from USB audio drops on my MacBook Pro, and after 63 pages of this thread, it's really made me consider other source options. A Wyrd might fix my audio drops, but it seems like the best choice overall would be to go S/PDIF.

This is my chain at the moment: MacBook Pro (Spotify) > Gungnir Multibit > Black Widow > HD800. I'm hoping to replace Black Widow with a Stratus (currently trying to join the waitlist).

Am I at the point where I should consider something like a Mutec? I could upgrade to Yggdrasil for the same price, but I feel the warmth of Gungnir Multibit suits the HD800 pretty well.

 

Yeah man, Yggdrasil and Gungnir Multibit both benefit from a clean source so before doing that I'd consider fixing the issue. My rec is getting a lynx pcie card and a thunderbolt enclosure for it and feeding Gungnir Multibit spdif/BNC. Mutec is good too paired with lynx but skipping USB altogether will give you bigger gains in my experience. Cost is about the same too.

Edit: what jexby says is true too. If you want a cheap and good spdif conversion there may be something good and affordable popping up soon

 

Thanks for the helpful replies, guys.

Damn, I didn't know skipping USB was an option for MacBooks. Really cool how you can use a thunderbolt enclosure for a PCIe card. Wouldn't this be much superior to spdif conversion?

 

This is normal for MacBooks. Whenever there are lots of dropouts, check your CPU usage. Even my shitty PC SPDIF output is almost immune to CPU load, unlike the MacBook USB out. Using a USB to SPDIF converter won't solve dropouts. It might improve sound quality if the converter has good clocks (jitter) and clean SPDIF out (noise). If you want the best sound quality and reliability/robustness at the cost of convenience and lots of money, Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure + Lynx is the way to go. If you want the convenience of USB while still improving sound quality, keeping your CPU usage in check + waiting for the possible Schiit USB to SPDIF is the way to go. However, as far as I know, Gungnir Multibit already has very good built-in clock regeneration.

 

I think so, if you can spare the 800-900 to get the parts. Otherwise waiting on an affordable USB to spdif might get you what you want, just depends!

 

The Singxer F-1 is a great option for those that want a high quality yet inexpensive USB to SPDIF DDC. They can be purchased for around $200 on eBay or from the US distributor.

 

Gungnir Multibit and Yggdrasil already have as good or better built-in regeneration clocks than the F-1. Only way to improve on Gungnir Multibit and especially on Yggdrasil USB Audio Class 3 is to use expensive SPDIF/AES sources like the Lynx stuff. Best way to improve USB performance for Gungnir Multibit and Yggdrasil would be not to have performance hogging crap running in the background of your OS or (best possible USB performance but you lose convenience factor) switch to a Linux distro dedicated for audio like Daphile where there's less going on "under the hood" with how your USB packets are (mis)handled and you can run the system in low-power mode to crap out less noise.

 

I agree. And a lot of problems started particularly when Apple released El Capitan. There are a lot of threads and articles online documenting OS X frequently dropping USB audio output.

I'm using a Late 2013 rMBP 15", 2.3GHz i7 with 16GB RAM. You'd think it'd be more immune to problems with more robust specs... Personally, I've found that clearing NVRAM will lessen or completely stop USB drop outs for some time. But after an extended period of usage without shutdown, USB audio dropouts are frequent enough to appear in almost every track I try to play. Hasn't improved for me either after macOS Sierra :/

 

Maybe it's about time to wipe everything and start with a clean slate :/ . I'm using a lowly 2015 rMBP 13'' with a dual-core i5. Check Activity Monitor to see what's hogging your CPU so much. Mine starts dropping out at around 25% CPU usage (AM calculates CPU usage by core I think, so a dual core like mine would show 50%) and when it gets to 75%, drops are as frequent as every 2-3s.