How to get the best digital signal from PC?

[ivo]

Hello jkeny,

If I could pitch in here as I have experience of both the Musiland 01US & Hiface units. I'm a tweaker so I bought these with the intention of getting the best sound out of them. Both use asynchronous USB which attracted me.

First, I bought the Musiland & was impressed with the stock sound but then I heard what a difference in SQ I got by supplying an external 5V supply instead of USB 5V. This set me on a path of PS mods - I'll provide links if anyone is interested. The result was a transformation.

BUT, I knew the limitation of the Musiland DAC was the audio clock generation (the various audio clocks are synthesised from one 24MHz clock, AFAIR) & I heard about the HiFace which had this problem addressed - it uses 2 physical low jitter clocks on-board. Stock, this sounded as good as the fully modded Musiland. When I modded the internal PS of the HiFace - it now soared in SQ - smooth & silky, like very good analogue with lots of detail

So, have you tried Monitor 02 US - this is the second version. I am wondering how it might compare with HiFace unit? Based on your post, HiFace is better out of box than Musiland 01US.

Ivo

[jkeny]

Hello jkeny,

If I could pitch in here as I have experience of both the Musiland 01US & Hiface units. I'm a tweaker so I bought these with the intention of getting the best sound out of them. Both use asynchronous USB which attracted me.

First, I bought the Musiland & was impressed with the stock sound but then I heard what a difference in SQ I got by supplying an external 5V supply instead of USB 5V. This set me on a path of PS mods - I'll provide links if anyone is interested. The result was a transformation.

BUT, I knew the limitation of the Musiland DAC was the audio clock generation (the various audio clocks are synthesised from one 24MHz clock, AFAIR) & I heard about the HiFace which had this problem addressed - it uses 2 physical low jitter clocks on-board. Stock, this sounded as good as the fully modded Musiland. When I modded the internal PS of the HiFace - it now soared in SQ - smooth & silky, like very good analogue with lots of detail

So, have you tried Monitor 02 US - this is the second version. I am wondering how it might compare with HiFace unit? Based on your post, HiFace is better out of box than Musiland 01US.

Ivo

The 02 US has an in-built switching supply which isolates the unit from the PC USB 5V supplies.

I modded my 01US which relied on USB power to totally operate off external supplies - the better the supply the better the sound. I settled on battery power as the cleanest. My LiFePo4 batteries should beat, hands down, the switching supplies within the 02 US

The stock Hiface sounded about as good as I remember the fully modded 01US to be - I didn't have a working Musiland to do an A/B compare so I might be wrong here but that's my memory of it.

When I moddded my Hiface I never even considered how it compared to the Musiland the sonic gap was such a chasm

[Flecko]

Thanks for the information. it is a pitty the m2tech is not relay designed to be a highend converter and still need mods. But it seems worth a try if not something better will show up.

A highend converter is/will be available BUT do you want to spend thousands of dollars - look to dCS, Wavelength, Empirical Audio - they all have USB products at these prices?

Of course I don't want to pay very much money on this extrem expensive stuff from dCS, wavelength etc... I don't know what a usb2-spif converter made by them costs but I guess it costs to much. The point is, that i don't want to tweak around a lot. I've been doing this for a long time and it is very time consuming. I like something that I just can use. Such things needn't to be expensive. There are good things on the market. They cost nearly nothing and are sounding very well. Like my Jungson JA-99C power amp. Costs 400€ and sounds like 4000€.

[Flecko]

Another thing. I have looked around and found there are media harddrives on the market, which can give a spdif signal from musicfiles stored on harddrive. This could be a solution for the PC playback problem because you don't need a pc to play the files. Does somebody know a good product? Has anybody made experiences and compared to pc and CDP playback?

[jkeny]

Another thing. I have looked around and found there are media harddrives on the market, which can give a spdif signal from musicfiles stored on harddrive. This could be a solution for the PC playback problem because you don't need a pc to play the files. Does somebody know a good product? Has anybody made experiences and compared to pc and CDP playback?

Squeezebox receiver without the controller & using iPod Touch as remote control (iPeng software)

[julcat2810]

These is a new option it's based on the musiland with power supply and independent clock it even has a tube gain for the spdif in the max version, looks very interesting

http://www.diyhifisupply.com/catalog/105

[jkeny]

These is a new option it's based on the musiland with power supply and independent clock it even has a tube gain for the spdif in the max version, looks very interesting

Yes, it's an improvement BUT the big issue with the Musiland is the clock - it uses a 24MHz crystal from which the audio clocks needed are synthesised - This is a formula for adding jitter & this is heard when compared against the HiFace which uses two low jitter clocks directly on the output which results in much lower jitter as there is no synthesis needed.

The modifications of the DiYhifisupply introduce a low jitter 24MHz clock in place of the 24MHz crystal BUT it still needs to be synthesised into the required audio clocks - not the best idea in the world - unfortunately this is the Musiland's weakness - if the clocks were handled as in the HiFace it may sound even better than the HiFace, who knows?

[Flecko]

Squeezebox receiver without the controller & using iPod Touch as remote control (iPeng software)Happy

this is not what i am looking for. I like somthing that can read files from a harddrive and convert it to spdif, without using a pc or any kind of windows ce in the unit itself.

[jkeny]

Squeezebox receiver without the controller & using iPod Touch as remote control (iPeng software)Happy

this is not what i am looking for. I like somthing that can read files from a harddrive and convert it to spdif, without using a pc or any kind of windows ce in the unit itself.

What do you think the squeezebox is - there's no PC in there - it's a network device that converts files (stored on a remote PC Linux or Win server) delivered over the ethernet to SPDIF!

[PeterSt]

there's no PC in there

I wouldn't be too sure about that !
Could be a small Linux implementation up to an Atom/Vista and worse ...

[jkeny]

It's a Linux implementation on a processor but so is a media tank device (except they have a cr*p GUI for music & are built for video mainly, whereas a squeezebox is focused on audio only) - it's hard to get away from needing some form of processing power. What I think is important for optimal sound is as small a hardware footprint as possible with as minimal a processing activity as possible. The PC, as a general purpose machine, just does not fulfill these criteria, hence all the machinations to try to achieve a smaller processing footprint. I'm sure you have your own view into all this  

[Flecko]

What do you think the squeezebox is - there's no PC in there - it's a network device that converts files (stored on a remote PC Linux or Win server) delivered over the ethernet to SPDIF!

Hmm, ok. But I still need a PC to manage the playback or can I just plug the hard drive and listen? Did you compared the soundquality of the spdif out with other devices?

I am looking for something like this:
http://www.pixelmagicsystems.com/products/media_players/hd_mediabox.htm
but don't know if it is the best system available.

[jkeny]

What do you think the squeezebox is - there's no PC in there - it's a network device that converts files (stored on a remote PC Linux or Win server) delivered over the ethernet to SPDIF!

Hmm, ok. But I still need a PC to manage the playback or can I just plug the hard drive and listen? Did you compared the soundquality of the spdif out with other devices?

The up-coming Squeezebox touch is such a device - attach an external drive & you can playback music via SPDIF out to DAC,etc. SPDIF is supposed to be very good according to Beta testers. It has a processor on the PCB & runs Linux - so does any Media Tank or device that handles media

[Flecko]

The up-coming Squeezebox touch is such a device - attach an external drive & you can playback music via SPDIF out to DAC,etc. SPDIF is supposed to be very good according to Beta testers. It has a processor on the PCB & runs Linux - so does any Media Tank or device that handles media Happy

That might be just what I am looking for. If the spdif signal is better than with my pc-usb-spdif solutiont, I could realy think of buying it. Probably I can tweak it a little bit with better oscilator etc.. damn, I must always think of something like this...
thanks for the hint!

[ivo]

It is already done:

http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/Squeezebox/squeezebox.html

It is not about Touch model, but who cares....

The only problem I see is that there is no way 16/44 is upsampled, so such good thing as Arc Pred is not possible there. Whatever sound comes out of its SPDIF - it will not be as juiceful as if used XX I guess. Opinions?

Ivo