Help me beat my CD Transport
- Thread starter joeling
- Start date
John Kenneth Galbraith was a man of great insight. I love another quote of his, but that gets quite political and may be deemed very offensive by some here -- even though it is very true -- so I'll let it be
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Empirical Audio
Industry Expert
Empirical Audio
Industry Expert
Joe - You have been my customer in the past. I have never had anything like the SQ of my new Interchange Ethernet renderer. Beats 6 generations of USB interfaces, including XMOS with galvanic isolation and outboard USB cable supply. Amazingly lifelike sound. Particularly great with live tracks, but even remastered Beatles sounds amazing. Measured S/PDIF coax jitter in the 16psec range at the end of my 4-foot Reference BNC cable into 75 ohm load. Does not support Roon.
Here are some feedbacks:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=156409.0
You can use any computer to drive it, but the best SQ comes when using Linn Kinsky as a control point, with Minimserver and BubbleUPnP as servers working together. All three of these are freeware.
The only requirement is that you have wired Ethernet or strong WIFI near your DAC.
Further improvements in SQ are created by:
1) Better Ethernet cables from last device to the Interchange, such as Wireworld
2) Earth-ground connected to DC common of the last device before the Interchange (router/switch/WIFI adapter)
3) Use EMO En70e isolator in the cable between the last device and the Interchange
4) Fast-reacting LPS for the last device
5) mods to the router or switch, such as AQVOX switch
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Here are some feedbacks:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=156409.0
You can use any computer to drive it, but the best SQ comes when using Linn Kinsky as a control point, with Minimserver and BubbleUPnP as servers working together. All three of these are freeware.
The only requirement is that you have wired Ethernet or strong WIFI near your DAC.
Further improvements in SQ are created by:
1) Better Ethernet cables from last device to the Interchange, such as Wireworld
2) Earth-ground connected to DC common of the last device before the Interchange (router/switch/WIFI adapter)
3) Use EMO En70e isolator in the cable between the last device and the Interchange
4) Fast-reacting LPS for the last device
5) mods to the router or switch, such as AQVOX switch
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
From the review:
"Most people playing their music via a computer will be using a USB DAC linked to their Windows or Mac OS machine. The slightly more intrepid might be using a Raspberry Pi for playback; this will usually be via an S/PDIF connected DAC. From my years of trying to get the best out of my computer and files playback I know that it is not as simple as zeros & ones being all you need to care about. Computers are horribly noisy beasts with lots of scope for injecting Radio Frequency Interference into your DAC and generally messing up the resulting sound." (End quote.)
Yup, that is why it's so hard to beat a good CD transport with a file player.
"Most people playing their music via a computer will be using a USB DAC linked to their Windows or Mac OS machine. The slightly more intrepid might be using a Raspberry Pi for playback; this will usually be via an S/PDIF connected DAC. From my years of trying to get the best out of my computer and files playback I know that it is not as simple as zeros & ones being all you need to care about. Computers are horribly noisy beasts with lots of scope for injecting Radio Frequency Interference into your DAC and generally messing up the resulting sound." (End quote.)
Yup, that is why it's so hard to beat a good CD transport with a file player.
dude - a Raspberry Pi is like $200. I assume you've compared it with an equivalent dvd player as transport.
Not so hard when you know how...
That's what they all say....
I'll believe it when I hear it....
Empirical Audio
Industry Expert
Jitter of typical transport:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0
Jitter of Interchange and RPI:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154299.0
I rest my case.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0
Jitter of Interchange and RPI:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154299.0
I rest my case.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
As we discussed, jitter is not the only issue. Also, a 'typical' transport is not every transport.
But I guess we go around in circles. I shouldn't have posted yet another comment that predictably elicits the typical responses.
Do you mean things like computers perhaps contributing emi/rfi that gets introduced into the ultimate signal?
Agreed, you shouldnt have! People have been working on both software and hardware refinement and improvements happen all the time.
Yes the trick is to turn a nasty general purpose PC into a music player without using a thin sounding OS. This means choosing the right Mobo with proper electrical subsystem handling, with proper shielding, proper filters on the drives, proper power being fed to the whole box, proper, separation of functions of the internal drives, proper isolation of the incoming signal, proper formatting of all, effective jitter reducing software, effective bios tweaking, effective throttling of the OS and CPU.
Basically, making the computer into a BAD general processing computer and into a great music server/player. I find when you do this, you dont have bandwith for upsampling and other fancy resource eating stuff. You just have a divine native rate playback beast.
Enuff preachy stuff now AL. ...go forth and sin (musically) no more. LoL
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