I have been working with tweaks on the Touch, how its used, how to get the best out of it for quite sometime. I have been primarily focusing on the analog signals coming out rather than the digital out. Soundcheck was also working on optimizing the the Touch, he took some of my stuff and added some more of his own. I have been trying out his tweaks for awhile as well as my own and combinations of the two. As I said I was primarily focusing how these have affected the analog outs, so when I see references to these tweaks that is what automatically comes to MY mind, tweaks for the analog out.
You are right, his page does talk about them as tweaks for the digital outs, so yes I could easily see how you could make the assumption that they are only for the digital outs. I can say that they are very effective on the analog outs as well. These software tweaks and some simple hardware changes produce analog outs that are astoundingly good, IMO way better than anything else you can get for $300. Now that I see where you are coming from I can comment on the digital side of things. Yes they DO affect the digital out. Whether you are going to hear that depends very much on the DAC its driving. Some DACs have much more imunity to differences on inputs than others. Unfortunately immunity to input differences does not necessarily go hand in hand with the best possible sound. There are certain methods for improving input immunity that degrade the sound from all sources. Some DAC designers have deliberately NOT used these techniques, the result is that using a really good source will give better sound than any source if using some immunity techniques. So IF you have one of these DACs that will give exceptionally good results IF fed from an exceptionally good source, these changes to the Touch WILL increase the sound quality. Whether the increase in SQ is worth giving up a local disk or the screen is entirely up to you. Now on the M2Tech HiFace. I know it well, I know how it works, what it does and how it performs. I also know the Touch as well. I have plenty of measurements I've made to back up any listening impressions. The upshot is that the Touch is actually a better S/PDIF source than the HiFace (not by a huge amount, they are both well designed devices). I has slightly lower jitter and does a better job of matching the impedance specs. Does this mean it will always sound better than a HiFace? No it does not. The truth of the matter is that very few DACs have inputs that even come close to meeting the S/PDIF pecs. The upshot is that the source that sounds the best for a given DAC is probably going to be the one which most closely matches the input characteristics of the particular DAC, not the one which most closely matches the spec. And because those input characteristics vary so much, its pretty much a crap shoot as to what source is going to sound the best. For a very good DAC which has a proper input implementation the Touch is going to be one of the best sources available. These Tweaks make it even better. Because of this crap shoot in compatibility between source and input, I still think someone that is aiming at REALLY good sound would be better using the Touch's analog outs with these software tweaks and the two hardware changes (disconnecting the display and bypassing the output caps). The results are extraordinarily good and would take way more money to achieve other wise. BTW the HiFace has two different digital outs, S/PDIF over RCA and AES/EBU over BNC. There is a thread over in the Audiophile forum comparing the digital out of the Touch to the BNC out of the HiFace connected to the BNC input of the Transporter. Note that the BNC out of the Touch is AES/EBU not S/PDIF. The BNC input of the transporter is also AES/EBU. Is it any wonder that the transporter sounds better being fed by a source that is of the type it was designed for? The primary difference is the voltage level, the S/PDIF out is 0.5V but the AES/EBU output is 2V. An AES/EBU input will work with the S/PDIF input, but it works much better with the voltage level it was designed for. I don't see that as proving the HiFace is inherently better than the Touch, just that in the configuration tested it more closely matches the input characteristics of the device being driven. John S. -- JohnSwenson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=80013 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
