rowuk wrote:

What is the argument USB vs SPDIF all about? Blowing smoke because the music is not in the center of the discussion, rather bogus technical hypothesis. I do not even read that garbage anymore because 1) they have no technical background that relates numbers to sound quality 2) the quality of their writing is geared towards the deaf mainstream consumers, not those looking for better music. There are hundreds of things more significant than the interface. These posts give me the jitters!

rowuk wrote:

Amir,you have now posted twice that "proper" USB is better than SPDIF. The problem is that it isn't, unless someone makes up rules to define their own sense of better. The problem here is that they have not defined anything that is better. Both methods have capability to exactly reproduce Redbook and hi res formats. So how to define better? One less device in the playback chain? Artificial declaration of jitter to be the root evil of all digital playback? I tell my trumpet students not to "throw up" on the music stands during lessons. That means playing with no brain or context - impulsively without any sense of aestethics. Similarly, throwing up a magazine article without context to me is "throwing up". Tell me what you think. You have had quite a bit of experience with all sorts of equipment. Can you separate "better" from sounds better? Do you have other experiences? I have repeatedly done DAC shootouts - even during recording sessions and have to say that many times the buffer stage on the output of the DAC made a bigger difference than picking the SPDIF, USB or Firewire interfaces. For the shootouts, I use recordings (symphony orchestra) that I have made myself with a (very high quality) stereo pair of microphones (AB, MS, DECCA Tree, ORTF). No EQ, no limiting or compression. I have never been able to attribute the "problems" that I have heard to any interface. Maybe my ears are simply not good enough, but if that is so, I am very happy because then the interface is one problem that I do not have. Now, the "sound" of the DAC is another story altogether.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I might be not “getting” what you are doing but it looks to me that it is not near close to “CEC TL0X vs Berkeley Alpha”. The Berkeley Alpha is just an interface to get stream of DAW but CEC TL0X is digital transport.  We have no idea what kind data acquisition front end AMR DAC has. So basically you will be testing CEC TL0 running into AMR DP-777 vs Macbook->Roon Labs->Berkeley->running into AMR DP-777. That might be an interesting practical test but in reality you will not be testing juts the above-mentioned chain but you will be testing else the quality of the CD production that will be running on CEC TL0X.  I do not know where you will get a WAV file that would be analogous to the CD master and you have no idea HOW the CD was made from that master. What I am trying to say is that you might find one or another playback option is preferable in your specific case but it would not necessary be an universal conclusion for anything.

Amir wrote:

fiogf49gjkf0df i guess the problem come from usb cable. these designers like AC Conditioner designers just kill dynamics. they remove noise but then kill the dynamic.

Amir wrote:

these are my findings about computer audio after some trial error: 1. computer audio is very very hardware/OS/software dependent. computer structure is multi task (time sharing) and using it as a real time single task processor is not easy. even small extra process load on cpu dramatically change the sound. wav and flac are the same but Wave/AIFF sounds better than Flac because cpu should unzip Flac before sending to port. i do not know why a small extra process will affect the sound even in a powerful cpu like core i5. if you select a fast/powerful cpu/ram and optimize OS/Software then you will get better sound . optimizing OS/Software is even more important than selecting powerful hardware. linux could be customise better than other os but mac osx is not bad , you can use renice command in osx terminal. i renice coreaudiod priority to -20 and the result is unbelievable. the best software on mac is Roon labs. it is far better than other bit-perfect softwares like ammara/audirvana/bitperfect . i use CAD optimization script and i use linux renice command to increase roonlabs and coreaudiod priority in system. http://www.computeraudiodesign.com/Computer%20Audio%20Design%20OSX%20Optimization%20Scripts%20V1.3.zip http://bencane.com/2013/09/09/setting-process-cpu-priority-with-nice-and-renice/ then you should use good linear power supply for PC , good battery or good LSPU should be use to get good sound. 2. computer audio needs gordon rankin codes. i use berkeley alpha usb to spdif converter.berkeley use Gordon Rankin for Streamlength asynchronous code. i do not why but i think without gordon codes you will not get good sound. 3. purist anniversary is the best usb cable in my setup even better than Acoustice revive and curious . I bet you hear good sound even better than over 50k$ transports. our last test was CEC TL0-X vs my Berkeley , they sounded very similar. my current setup : Macbook Pro mid 2014 Retina 13″ (USB output on right side of Macbook), 8Gig RAM, Core i5 + External HDD (Thunderbolt port) MAC OS X Mavericks + CAD optimization Script + iTunes EQ off Roon Labs Player Software (true Bit-Perfect mode with exclusive access) + AIFF File Format Purist Audio Anniversary USB Cable 1.0m Berkeley Alpha USB (Gordon Rankin for Streamlength asynchronous code) + Purist Aquila AC Cable 1.5m AMR DP-777 DAC (BNC input)

nycparamedic wrote:

After living with my current custom Linux music server does not leave me wanting anything much when it comes to playing music: A PC Engines ALIX single board computer in a small aluminum enclosure and running Voyage Linux. The music playing software, MPD, is based on the client/server model. The ALIX board runs the server daemon, and any other device in the house controls and displays a GUI. The ALIX board is a completely silent and fanless single board computer that only consumes 4 watts of power. The CPU is an x86 compatible AMD Geode running at 500Mhz; no need to compile special software. 256mb of RAM allows me to buffer FLAC files %100 to RAM before playing. The device has 2 USB ports, one of which is used to feed a USB DAC. There is no VGA, mouse, keyboard, or onboard video. Voyage Linux is a stripped down version of Debian Linux desinged to run on embedded or low power devices, such as the ALIX. It can run off of a compact flash card as small as 128MB and runs entirely in RAM. Most importantly, it keps Debian's APT package manager; installing software such as MPD and ALSA is only one apt-get command away. On the server it is configured with no audio software mixers, and MPD is given a direct hardware address of the USB DAC thus affording bit-perfect output. The MPD server daemon allows the ALIX server to do one thing very well: play music. MPD fetches FLAC files via NFS from my bedroom computer, buffering one song at a time completeely to RAM. I can control the MPD server from multiple clients, which can all be connected at the same time. MMPC on a Nokia N800 tablet, and GMPC on the bedroom computer. There are a multitude of MD clients to chose from. from bluetooth phones to the iPod Touch.

xandcg wrote:

²as Romy already said on this forum, he is a developer and certainly he know how to proper build a DAW.

Romy the Cat wrote:

xandcg wrote: ²as Romy already said on this forum, he is a developer and certainly he know how to proper build a DAW. Hm, I do not think I ever said it ether. As a software engineer I have for sure expertise but: I am absolutely ignorant in computer hardware and I did nothing serious in my professional life with sound processing. So under no circumstances I would feel that I have any advantages over anybody else in construction of DAW. In fact when I did it I was shooting absolutely blind and I have make any claims how performance of my DAW relates to performants any other DAWs out there. So, please, let be sane about it.

xandcg wrote:

It has some many variables involved what make in practice very "system dependent". A CD transport follow (more or less) a constant design, while each PC can have so many differences between each other it is impossible to make a statement. At the (normal) PC side we have several parts¹: motherboard (with several different parts in it), fans, ssd/hdd, PSU, processor, memory (I use RDIMM only), etc. all of them can contribute for the result, specially with noise, and none of then was designed with audio in mind. Well, there are the audio cards but everyday day people use more and more USB DACs. IMHO, the only way to avail it with (more or less) parity between them would be using a proper built DAW² or a commercially available DAW. Something like Aurender N10 should be interesting to add in the mix, because it has a FPBA and seem quite well made. ¹not to say OS, files system, BIOS/UEFI, drivers... ²as Romy already said on this forum, he is a developer and certainly he know how to proper build a DAW.