USB to spdif converter questions

erniejade

I have a w4s dac2 using flac on jriver. I have been reading about USB to spdif converters. Would I benefit from one? Any issues with DSD with this since I am planning on upgrading my dac2. Will I hear a difference with a USB to spdif converter?

dragon1952

How are you currently connecting your DAC to your PC? This whole USB-SPDIF converter thing looks like a slippery slope to me, but I'm avoiding it by using my SB Touch's coax out to my DAC. If you're going from your PC's USB into your DAC, from all reviews and reports I've seen the converters make a difference. But if you go that route then you have a whole new can of worms in deciding how much you want to spend because, of course, most of the reviews and opinion state that the more expensive ones sound better. So then you get to decide if you will be satisfied with a little better for a fairly reasonable amount or if you want to go all out for optimal and plunk down another $600 - $1000.

polkfarmboy

Factor in the cost of a high priced digital cable and add that to the price something like a stello and your talking half the price of your DAC :cool:

erniejade

I do have a decent penga usb cable that did sound better then the original. Looks like w4s also has one. I will look into the stello. I dont mind the price as long as its a 600 $ sounding difference. Any ideas if dsd will be an issue with one?

SCompRacer

I think it will all depend on your source jitter. You have a DAC with the ESS Sabre chip. They handle S/PDIF in a way that does not require explicit measurement of the clock to decode S/PDIF. What this means is, per their white paper, “Using this method the SPDIF interface is able to accommodate 50nS of random jitter and 200nS of sinusoidal jitter in the incoming data.”

http://www.esstech.com/PDF/sabrewp.pdf

So even if you have some jitter it still salvages it and sounds great. Less jitter is better though. Since most all of us don’t have ways to measure jitter, all we can do is try things and hear if it sounds better. What’s jitter sound like? Various stages of lack of resolution, fuzzy or unclear, flat, grainy and unmusical.

With my ESS Sabre DAC, I2S input from my modded SB Touch or modded Denon 3910 that exports I2S and DSD seems to have a slight edge over S/PDIF via Touch coax out. I2S and DSD are clocked data streams, where clock and data are separate and not embedded requiring decoding. Others may perceive this differently than I do. So again, you’d have to try one and hear what happens. The key with the converter is reclocking the S/PDIF signal before handing off to the DAC for the lowest jitter.

Not all USB/SPDIF modules will do DSD. The mod you are adding may not work well or at all if you connect it to a USB to S/PDIF converter that will do DSD. Best ask Wyred before going down that road. Be curious to hear what they say. I read somewhere that Sonore has a USB to SPDIF converter that will do DSD, but again not sure if you can connect that to your added DSD input.

My I2S out modded Touch. I wish the board looked this big in person when doing the mod....

AsSiMiLaTeD

My best guess is you may be able to hear a small difference, but highly doubt that will be $600 unless the USB on your w4s is just horrible

falconcry72

I'll have an answer for you soon. I'm picking up a DAC2 this morning to do some of the comparisons you're talking about. First I'll be comparing the DAC2's direct USB input to its SPDIF input via my Stello U3. Whichever of those sounds better I will then face off against my Stello/Audio GD combo to see what will stay in the rig. The DAC2 is supposed to have a very good USB input, so I think you'd have to add an awesome USB converter to gain an increase in performance... you could possibly even degrade performance by adding a sub-par converter.

As far as DSD goes... I have no idea.

erniejade

The sound on the dac2 is good. With cd, well, how can I put it......... this might sound strange but here it goes. Running a elite pd 9 as the transport with the dac2 on redbook sounds fantastic to me. So good in fact that it consistently sounded BETTER then SACD! I have a few cd's that I have the redbook of and the sacd of. switching it from the dac2 on redbook, to the internal dac on the pioneer with sacd, I pick the redbook / w4s combo every time. Now using the internal dac on the pioneer redbook vs sacd sacd wins every time. It is a solidly built and sounding player and made a better sounding transport vs my denon 2190.
Myself, Newrvial, and my GF each time when we did a test between the denon and the pioneer as a transport feeding the w4s would pick the pioneer every time. The w4s I heard what I was missing.

BTW, this started another $$$ slope of buying and selling sacd players to now match what the w4s does with redbook so I can have that out of my sacd's! If only the players would do dsd over the coax or optical out to the w4s, I would not be having this issue! Well not an issue, it still sounds good but not as good as... we all know the story in our audio journey.


Now usb running through the w4s, flac, jriver not using any of the sound correction in jriver, using flac that I have ripped myself does sound good. Can I hear a difference between that and the original cd, yes. Is it night and day difference? NO. I really have to listen for it and I hear it mainly in the top end. The cd to me is a little clearer or sharper. The GF could not hear a difference nor could most of my friends who I played the cd / then flac for. So not sure to be honest if its just me???? BTWE huge difference between the redbook rips flac and the 192/24 or 96/24 rips. The higher res does sound better but, I really do not want to rebuy all of my sacd in hirez flac.


Rest of the system is AR sp16 pre with early 60's tung sol, dh labs wire all around, legacy focus, sinfire sig II redone by Rolland. ( went through a lot of amps and kept going back to the sunfire. HUGE difference between the sig II and the reg. Still not done on the quest though.. I don't think we stop, we just keep changing lol.

So, I am planning on sending the unit back to w4s for the dsd to be installed so I can take advantage of downloading some. Good idea on calling w4s also. I will do that today.
Falconcry72, PLEASE keep us in the loop on your findings!!

Ern Dog

ErnieJade- If I had the W4S dac, I'd be taking advantage of the I2S input. My limited understanding about it is that it is a direct input into the clock. If you inserted an Off Ramp USB converter using an I2S cable, this should give you the best that the dac has to offer. Check out this thread from Empirical Audio owner: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=112012.0
Ernie

PS- Off Ramps are spendy. Option 2 would be to get an Audiophilleo2 with power supply. These offer most of the performance you would get from an Off ramp, but for 1/2 the price. However, you wouldn't be able to use the I2S feature with it.

falconcry72

erniejade wrote: »

...Running a elite pd 9 as the transport with the dac2 on redbook sounds fantastic to me. So good in fact that it consistently sounded BETTER then SACD! I have a few cd's that I have the redbook of and the sacd of. switching it from the dac2 on redbook, to the internal dac on the pioneer with sacd, I pick the redbook / w4s combo every time...

This comes as no surprise to me. The D/A conversion is much more influential to sound quality than is the higher resolution that SACD's offer. That's why I have never gotten into SACD... to get a SACD player that has as good of an internal DAC as my Audio GD NFB-7, I'd have to spend 5-10 times the cost.


I just got home with my newly acquired DAC2, and I will start playing with it now. I have a busy weekend ahead, so I might not get around to posting impressions until next week. This is fun stuff! I love A/B'ing!

SCompRacer

I can agree with the linked assessment Ern Dog. I get clearer and more defined with I2S, but some folks prefer the S/PDIF presentation. Again, I think much depends on how much source jitter you have with either method.

I2S is a serial bus interface that connects your transport to the DAC chip in a player. Native DSD works in the same way, clock is separate from data. I2S can sound better than S/PDIF, but it wasn’t designed for long runs. Adding excess length to the clock signal does add jitter.

I use an LVDS or Low-voltage differential signaling device called a Teleporter set as transmitter from my modded Touch and Denon player. An LVDS receiver is in the DAC. It preserves the clock and data over long runs, up to 100 feet per the designer. I use a two meter Cat5 cable. When I first snagged I2S/DSD out of my player, a 1 meter run of Cat5 would result in interrupts as the DAC could not lock on the signal. With the Teleporters, no problem. SQ is excellent.

My USB to I2S adapter in my DAC reclocks before handing off the signal to the DAC chip. The source clock is very important in achieving the best SQ with digital. Once you input DSD into your DAC I think you will be rewarded with even better SQ.

SCompRacer

Maybe since you’re asking questions perhaps ask Wyred if they do anything with quantisizer settings when the DSD input is feeding the DAC. I get better (or some might say different) SQ with DSD using 8 and 9 bit settings. This is due to changing the internal mapping of the DAC chip. See there are 8 separate DAC’s in that single chip, and when used in stereo configuration all are usually combined. Since I implemented Arduino I2C serial control of my DAC chip I have access to all the settings. Without I2C I would be left with fixed dipswitch settings; much harder to change.

Quantizer Input Channels Output
6-bit 8 (All) 8

erniejade

Work got crazy yesterday and I did not have a shot to call them. I will try Monday.

For the sacd to come close or sound as good to the w4s I wound up going back to a tube cd player. Cayin scd50 with vintage mullard for all 3 tubes. I had to have tried 7 /9 different sets of tubes looking to get the sound I wanted but I think I got it now.

Now im debating to keep the pioneer as a transport to save the tubes life and only use the cayn for sacd. Both units as transports are good.

I will look into the i2s. Just when I think I got it down I learn something new!

SCompRacer

erniejade wrote: »

For the sacd to come close or sound as good to the w4s I wound up going back to a tube cd player.

I'll be looking forward to your impressions once you have that DSD mod installed in your DAC. Native DSD should sound fantastic through that DAC. As good or better than the redbook or hi res. I might host something here for the RAS group soon. If you like to hear what I have going on I'll let you know when, or pick a weekend of your choice and see if we will be around. I'm a dead arse and rarely go anywhere....except for today. I drove to Ohio to pick up a 144 pound Classs A amp.:cheesygrin:

erniejade

I will take you up on that. Your in plainfield? Im in Bolingbrook, newrival is between you and I also.

The drive to pick up the amp, hope you had help picking that beast up!

heiney9

We need a RAS meet for sure and new faces are always welcome.

SCompRacer

erniejade wrote: »

The drive to pick up the amp, hope you had help picking that beast up!

Carl helped me get it in my trunk. I was pretty pumped when I got home so I was able to lift it out and set it on a hand truck to move it into house. Due to bad sinus problems I hardly slept the night before. I left at 4:30AM and got back at 5:15PM. I crashed hard at 7PM!

Yes, I'm in Plainfield, not far from you at all. Brock is right; we are long overdue for a get together. I have to renegotiate the living room contract with the wife and get some more space to fit this thing…..:cheesygrin:

erniejade

Called W4S yesterday. They said with the dac2, a spdif converter would not make a difference and talked me out of it. They said the converter in the dac2 is already outstanding and it would not benefit nor would I hear a sound difference in the dac2.

I am also going to ship mine back for the dsd upgrade.
They also have a SE upgrade @1250 that he said takes it to another level. Now they have me thinking of that as well! Do I want to put another 1000 into the dac and am I going to hear a 1000$ difference? Too much to think about at work LOL.

98Badger

Do it Ernie! Ok, I'm only saying that because I am considering the same upgrade eventually.

dragon1952

erniejade wrote: »

Called W4S yesterday. They said with the dac2, a spdif converter would not make a difference and talked me out of it. They said the converter in the dac2 is already outstanding and it would not benefit nor would I hear a sound difference in the dac2.

I am also going to ship mine back for the dsd upgrade.
They also have a SE upgrade @1250 that he said takes it to another level. Now they have me thinking of that as well! Do I want to put another 1000 into the dac and am I going to hear a 1000$ difference? Too much to think about at work LOL.

To many people any significant improvement is "worth it"...heck, to many people any improvement at all is worth it. The monetary value one places on an improvement is totally subjective though and to a degree also dependent on their bank accounts. $1000 is a lot of money though to most of us and chances are a DAC that good in the first place is not going to sound twice as good with another $1250 worth of additions (1/2 of which is likely labor anyway). You didn't set out to spend nearly $3000 on a DAC, and you're never going to get anything close to that back if you ever decide to sell it. Not trying to talk you out of it, just stating the obvious.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Agreed

falconcry72

dragon1952 wrote: »

You didn't set out to spend nearly $3000 on a DAC, and you're never going to get anything close to that back if you ever decide to sell it. Not trying to talk you out of it, just stating the obvious.

...but if he is now ok with spending 3k total on a DAC, one option would be to sell the DAC2 and buy a 3k DAC... preferably a couple year old model that retailed for 5k. I'm not saying that a 5k DAC will inherently sound better than a modded DAC2, I'm just saying that that's a legit option to consider, and you should definitely consider all your options when you're thinking about dropping coin like this.

Cheers!

Polkitup2

erniejade wrote: »

Called W4S yesterday. They said with the dac2, a spdif converter would not make a difference and talked me out of it. They said the converter in the dac2 is already outstanding and it would not benefit nor would I hear a sound difference in the dac2.

I am also going to ship mine back for the dsd upgrade.
They also have a SE upgrade @1250 that he said takes it to another level. Now they have me thinking of that as well! Do I want to put another 1000 into the dac and am I going to hear a 1000$ difference? Too much to think about at work LOL.

The converter in the DAC-2 may be good, however, when I added a Bel Canto Reflink to my DAC-2 it was a substantial improvement. I spoke with Clint yesterday and asked if the improved USB in the DAC-2 SE would benefit from an external converter. He indicated he didn't think so but indicated that clocks do matter. Anyhow, I receive my DAC-2 SE upgrade later today and will find out at some point. :cheesygrin: