[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
cliveb Wrote: The Benchmark DAC1 is immune to jitter because it sample rate converts everything it receives (upsampled to its internal maximum sample rate: 96 or 192kHz, depending on the vintage). This allows the upsampled data stream to be clocked out by the DAC1's own high-precision internal clock, which completely isolates it from any jitter on the incoming signal. Yes, but in order to upsample it, it will still need to synchronise it's upsampling clock(s) to the incoming signal - so it still must require a PLL. BTW the SB2/3s DAC oversamples - which is effectively the same technique as upsampling (although oversampling assumes integer ratios, which makes the digital filtering a bit simpler). Interesting too, that audiophiles are happy with the Benchmark approach of upsampling CD (44.1KHz) to 2x48KHz, but baulk at the idea of Roku upsampling 44.1KHz to 48KHz in their product! Personally, I think people get too hung up on the technology and forget to listen to the results, but hey what do I know, I'm only an engineer. -- Patrick Dixon www.at-view.co.uk Patrick Dixon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=90 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
Patrick Dixon Wrote: Interesting too, that audiophiles are happy with the Benchmark approach of upsampling CD (44.1KHz) to 2x48KHz, but baulk at the idea of Roku upsampling 44.1KHz to 48KHz in their product! Personally, I think people get too hung up on the technology and forget to listen to the results, but hey what do I know, I'm only an engineer. It's not a matter of can you hear it. One of the core advantages of digital is fidelity. Why rate convert a digital signal when it's essentially unnecessary? As far as I know, the benchmark supports 44.1 natively. -- jhwilliams jhwilliams's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1876 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
What are the disadvantages?Well the main one is that an external DAC requires a PPL to lock it's own clock to the incoming DATA signal. Even if you feed the transport clock over to the DAC, you still have the effect of the interconnect and distance to deal with. In the 'good old days' of turntables, Linn used to advocate their belt drive LP12 against the Japanese manufacturers' Direct Drive, crystal locked, decks by saying something along the lines that the cystal locked ones didn't have the same speed stability because they require a degree of 'hunting' to make them work. A phase locked clock is effectively doing the same (although the amounts are very tiny). Well not having a Wifi component sitting beside the DAC would be an advantage. I'm not sure how far away you can get your deck from the SB, but I suspect that RF is present thoughout your house anyway. Besides, you can always use a wireless SB ;-) Dedicated DACs have very specific analog and digital paths. Particularly the power supply and division of components will be deliberately discrete.No reason why you can't do that with a SB - I have and it works really well. AFAICS, there are only two advantages in a external DAC 1) If you have multiple digital sources and you use the DAC after digitally switching or processing those sources. 2) To allow for changes of DAC for different audio 'tastes'. -- Patrick Dixon www.at-view.co.uk Patrick Dixon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=90 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
jhwilliams Wrote: As far as I know, the benchmark supports 44.1 natively. My understanding is that this is not the case. The DAC1 upsamples everything to 96kHz (old version) or 192Khz (newer versions). -- cliveb cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
Patrick Dixon Wrote: :-) :-) You can't hear frequencies above 20KHz - are you suggesting that audio systems should reproduce them too? If so, then you must be sadly disappointed with CD ... Well, no, but said system should at least try and maintain digital fidelity. So, yes, from that perspective redbook is a little disappointing :-) -- jhwilliams jhwilliams's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1876 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
Ahh, so you're a purist ... as well as having sharp hearing! -- Patrick Dixon www.at-tunes.co.uk Patrick Dixon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=90 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
IMO current DAC's will be redundant in 5 years, not because of better DAC's, but because of digital amplifiers. Squeezebox will most likely have an (optional) integrated digital amp. Digital amps will also have HDMI inputs, which will support copy protection (HDCP I think they're calling it). As for frequency response of CD's, the problem of limiting them to 44kHz sample rates is the extreme filtering required to remove artifacts above 20kHz. Oversampling does this filtering in the digital domain. Upsampling (per my understanding) allows some artifacts through. e.g. 44kHz upsampled to 96kHz will create artifacts in the 20-40kHz region. It will then be oversampled to get rid of the higher frequency artifacts. This may sound better for the following reasons - firstly, it moves the harsh filtering futher away from the audible region, secondly, the artifacts approximate energy that was originally there, and whilst we can't hear this directly, it may affect our perception of sound below 20kHz. EDIT: probably more importantly than either of the above 2 points is that the artifacts introduced by upsampling help to 'even out' errors in the DAC. -- bludragon bludragon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1530 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] modded to death?
I've spend the last few months modifying the SB2, today, after evaluating a different clocks again, it stopped playing. Everything seems to function, everything measures fine, only the music doesn't run, the counter stays at 00:00 I've performed a reset + reprogramming xilinx, but the counter stays at 00:00 Any ideas to reanimate it? Otherwise I'll have to buy a new one (or two). I think I was close to it's limits, I've compared it with several high-end CD-transports, it did beat most of them. Even with some simple mods you can reach a very high level: - take digital out straight from the xilinx chip to the output (not via the 74HCU04), use a good s/pdif transformer. - replace the clock(s) with an oscillator with very low phase noise in the audioband, put it on a dedicated ultra low noise regulator (this way I get far better results than with expensive 'superclocks'). - remove power from dac and analogue out section if you don't use it. - replace switching regulators with ultra low noise linear regulators, these also give better results than battery supplies (batteries are silent until you put a digital load on them) Take care of proper layout, it makes a difference how/where you put the regulators (grounding, decoupling, etc), all parts and wires are radiating and influencing each other (external regulators often increase grounding problems and wires become antenna's, I keep them on the boards). If the SB4 could offer the above as standard, I guess it could become a bestseller in high-end audio. It's not too difficult and not very expensive to incorperate. -- void void's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1380 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18106 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: Will an outboard dac be an improvment over my Anthem AVM20
Just my luck, the Alpha came yeterday but the transformer broke during shipping. Well.. back to the old drawing board Ken -- Kenr Kenr's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1134 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17286 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: SB-3 and external DAC
Patrick, Yes, but in order to upsample it, it will still need to synchronise it's upsampling clock(s) to the incoming signal - so it still must require a PLL. The Benchmark uses an AD1896 and upsamples asynchronously, the incoming clock is not used at all beyond the AD1896, there's a local clock that totally determines the jitter performance at the DAC. Everything is upsampled to 110kHz then fed to an AD1853 DAC, the ASRC acting as the de-jitter process. Of course the internal clock has to be low jitter (which it appears to be, from the measurements I've seen). Andy. -- Andrew L. Weekes Andrew L. Weekes's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=573 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17948 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Re: EAC vs Musicmatch
sfraser Wrote: Hi, I am new to the SB2 SS products but have been storing wav files on hardrives for years. Quick qustion, I see alot of people like using EAC product for ripping CD's. What are your opinions regarding file/sound quality of using a product like Musicmatch to rip CD's in WAV format VS EAC in unsecure mode? I will assume as long as there are no bit errors in the ripping process the files will be identical and therefore sound the same? Scott I don't imagine anyone has ever bothered doing benchmarks of ripping accuracy between MusicMatch and Unsecure EAC. The whole point of EAC is the secure mode. Basically, if you don't care about quality (or your CD's are in perfect condition), use whatever you like. If you want perfect quality (especially if your CD's are scratched), then use EAC in secure mode. That's all there is to it. -- clumsyoik clumsyoik's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1997 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17509 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB1 digital out compared to SB2 and SB3
ok, given that SB2 and SB3 feature the same hardware; my real question is : is there a difference between the DIGITAL out of the SB1 and the DIGITAL out of the SB2 ? ...i'm planning on using an external DAC, so i thank you all in advance for feedback that will help me decide which SQUEEZEBOX i am going to buy. =) -- kronos kronos's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=728 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18116 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
