Hi there everybody!
LONG STORY SHORT: WHY DOES THE \"TOUCH\" WITH ENHANCED DIGITAL OUTPUT OVER USB SOUND COMPRESSED AND NARROW COMPARED SIDE-BY-SIDE TO THE USBRIDGE? BOTH PLAYING OBVIOUSLY AT 100% VOLUME ON THE SQUEEZEBOX SERVER AND CLIENT - SIDE. IS THERE A SETTING I HAVE OVERSEEN...? The long version: I used the Touch with EDO for many years, with a (rather) nice gear behind it. And I was believing that this was "as good as it gets". Then I was away from home for some months and had no access to my Touch and to my "fancy" gear... and I searched a temporary solution: Not too bad sounding but not too expensive. I got myself a "USBridge" from Allo based on "Sparky" (and attached it to a nice hifi-setup, however some levels lower and many levels cheaper than the previous one). I have no idea of this Sparky-kind of gear, however, I guess this is some kind of experimental minimalist computer, much like what's more well known as "Raspberry Pi", combined with an additional board festering just one USB - Port that is supposed to be uncoupled, re-clocked and "clean". Whatever that means. And it has Squeezelite on it. It was a true pain i. t. a. to get it configured right... and instructions that are understandable for a non-linux-coder are obviously nothing that "Allo" would care much about. However, their forum-support was helpful, just to get this mentioned, too. But at the end, it worked. And it was my main music setup for a couple of months. Now I got my Touch back together with my "big" hifi-chain. Just to play around, I attached the USBridge to it instead of the Touch. It just sounded great, very dynamic, very well defined, airy, relaxed and powerfull. No surprise... However, the Touch has a display and a feature I like very much which is, that my DAC and the Touch communicate in a way, that I can use the remote control of the DAC to skip tracks forward, avoiding me to have lunch with my smartphone on the table. So, I attached the Touch EDO over USB. And I actually expected it to sound just the same as the USBridge. At the end, Bits are Bits. And clock timing shortcomings (aka jitter) are no big problem anymore, as long as the through-output (bandwidth) is strong enough, since USB got asynchronous, and so the signal is anyway buffered and clocked in the DAC and not anymore in the source. Right? I first thought, that it was my mood making me feel that the sound was compressed, narrow, with thin bass, voices that were not in the foreground, and just everything sounding less involving. However, I did the test and switched a couple of times between the USBridge and the Touch. Of course, both of them over USB and with volume settings on the squeezeboxes always at 100%. To my surprise (and disappointment...) I am convinced now that the USBridge sounds significantly better. Instruments and voices are much better defined and separated, foreground voices are actually foreground, soundstage is wider and more transparent, bass is clearly better defined and much more distinguishable, timbre of instruments is more natural. Strangely I get the impression, that the Touch sounds louder with the same volume setting on the amplifier... This makes me think that there is a chance that the problem lies in a setting and not in the hardware. Don't get me wrong: It sound great already with the Touch. Anyway, USBridge sounds really better here. Anyway, I still believe that (asynchronous) Bits should be just Bits, and that the difference resulting of a uncoupled USB-Port should, if ever, give only a subtle difference in terms of sound quality. And I'd like to use the convenience of the Touch... So maybe somebody can give me hint about what setting could be wrong on my Touch in order to make it compress the music...? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ diego's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=40897 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=114895 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
