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

Simultaneous output seems overkill for the purpose we've been discussing here. There are several USB>S/PDIF or USB>I2S boxes around that are cheaper, too.

 

Switched USB ports on my MacBook and the drop outs are gone! Seems like my left USB port (next to the Thunderbolt ports) is bad.

Waiting on the Aries 2 release now. Hopefully the current gen will drop in price

 

@Faker this just came out : https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/15/apple-releases-macos-sierra-10-12-5/
Might be improved USB audio drivers.

 

Wouldn't hold my breath. The current Aries is a good form/function package compared with the Aries 2, which seems to have a lot more bling. I bought an Aries used recently after looking for a while, most owners seem really happy unless they move to a setup that does not need the Aries (as the former owner of the one I bought).

 

Do you have the LE or the Deluxe version? Not sure how much additional $600 value the added Femtoclocks would bring, but the linear PSU is nice.

 

Has anyone used an Cocktail Audio X50? Seems like a streamer/player that's too good to be true for all the options you get.

 

There's a bit more to the "full" version than just clocks and the linear PSU.

For one, the whole implementation is different enough to result in lower electrical noise. This appears to be the principal reason for the better audible performance with DACs like Yggdrasil (for which the femto clocks shouldn't really make a difference). It also has double the RAM which is useful in terms of overall performance and, most specifically, properly enabling the memory-play feature for demanding source material.

 

Deluxe. I've not compared with the LE. 'm happy how it works with my Yggdrasil. It replaces 3 boxes -- microRendu, LPS-1, SU-1 -- saving space and wiring mess. I did not do extensive comparisons between it and the previous setup, but it sounds at least as good, maybe slightly cleaner background, but that could easily be placebo effect. Anyway, the simplification was worth it by itself.

 

I am still in USB + Wyrd land feeding my Yggdrasil (I know, I know!) as I opted to wait it out for a properly defined digital source. Yesterday I burnt a CD on my laptop to use as test track at Munich High End. One of the test tracks is Wagner's Gotterdamerung finale by Solti.

As soon as I fired up the CD on my laptop drive into the Wyrd-Yggdrasil-Rag-Utopia chain the sound was noticable better compared to the same track fed from hard drive and USB hub. Mind you I am still using the USB-out to Yggdrasil but the internal DVD drive eliminated the USB-in from hard drive to laptop. The sound is airier with better defined imaging wand much less veil. Nilsson, best Wagnerian soprano ever, sounded absolutely gorgeous and the orchestra was alive!

Now my first priority is speaker purchase but improving my digital source looks like something that NEEDS to happen!

Aries or AES PCI-e cards seem like the best solutions at the moment (Rednet seems like overkill). A windows based box solution fed by PCI-e card from laptop may do the trick. I may need to wait for Schiit to show their own solution first, we'll see.

 

The Aries mini or full version would be your best bet, imho.

Auralic is announcing their new Aries G2 line on Thursday at Munich (please go check this out and report back if you can!)) so I suspect a bunch of people may be dumping their's in preparation for the latest and greatest. Good time to get a great deal for a great product.

 

Now that's something I need to hear this weekend at Munich high end. I am sure there will not be a Yggdrasil hooked up to Aries though so it would be almost futile to check for any sound qualities as the DAC will probably be a piercing DS contraption. A used Aries 1 will probably be a good option though as even simply using my builtin laptop DVD player made a holy moly difference.

 

Are you sure the track you have on the hard drive is a high-quality lossless rip? If it is, check if your audio player allows you to increase the size of your playback buffer so an entire track can fit and play from RAM, rather than from the hard drive.

 

I originally thought the release of the G2 would put significant downward pressure on the used prices of the original Aries units. But since Auralic have decided they're going to sell the Aries G2 for $3,899, I suspect it's going to have a much smaller effect in that regard.

The G2 is going to have to be markedly better than the original Aries to justify that sort of pricing given various other solutions in the space, and I'm just not sure that there's enough room for improvement on the original Aries to justify a 2.5x price multiplier.

 

Tracks are all high quality lossless on hard drives (most of my tracks are). I use Jriver and can increase buffer size. However some experienced members did mention that the less buffer the better in the past, so I tend to keep it on the low side. In his AES review Marv also mentions a low buffer setup to improve sound but that concerns AES. However in my case a larger buffer might do the trick... will check tonight

 

Yikes, I hadn't seen a price listed anywhere. Almost ironic that their CEO said they're not wanting to be in the business of astronautical hifi gear and yet just for one of 4(?) of their upcoming boxes certainly seem to be leaning that way. I suppose it's not $10,000+, maybe that's what he meant

Very curious to see more specs of about this and the other units they have coming out (like a word clock and so on). Doubt things will be in my reach if that's the price in USD.

 

Any news on the new UltraRendu? I hope it will be priced competitively, unlike the G2.

 

"The ultraRendu remains as an Ethernet input and USB Audio output, but all the connectors are now located on the rear of the unit for easy cable routing."

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/31811-sonore-ultrarendu/

For me, I'm not interested in such a device which only does USB-out. I2S, AES or BNC...now we're talkin'.

If I was super gung-ho about using USB, without a doubt I'd consider Kitsune

https://kitsunehifi.com/product/kte...6-dop-free-shipping-with-coupon-code-singxer/

For now I have a streamer built into my dac but am curious if anything could be improved without introducing USB.

 

It's unfortunate that all the digital output options are essentially flawed. Having the source push data at the receiver made total sense in the analog domain, where the receiver is just an amplifier or recorder of what is being sent.

For playback of recorded data? Really it should have been the other way around. The DAC should have been pulling the digital data at a negotiated rate, and then it wouldn't have mattered if the data was sent as a stream or packets, timing wouldn't have mattered so long as the source could keep up (easy stuff over USB), the DAC could have pulled data when ready, buffered, and driven the clock during the data to analog conversion process.

On the positive side, some DACs have quite good re-clocking features.

 

I like the AES output of my Lynx card.
Not sure I know what flaws there is with this kind of output?

 

This post is off base on several points. First, not all digital output options are essentially flawed. AES/EBU is perfectly fine and I2S is better yet. Second, a DAC is a realtime device that should be transparent to the process of playing music. Therefore it can't be a pull device that "buffers" tracks at its leisure. No matter what when using USB, the DAC can't drive the clock on the computer.