I’m not going to get into the fine details, that’s for an individual post on each, what i will say though it took me a very long time to understand HOW these devices actually help in each individual application based on source, interconnects, and power. After years of fiddling around w/ various pieces of equipment and allot of back and forth listening my ears are finally starting to get trained in hearing actual distinct performance variations with different specific pieces placed in and out of the signal chain. I’m soooo very slow that way and my brain and ears take a very long time of listening to the same music over and over and over to finally spark the dim lightbulb in my head that somedays lights up and says, “Oh snap, this is cleaner, more vibrant, i hear space now, or better yet…now this is blackness”, or lastly something as simple as, “I stopped hearing my hard-drive ticking.”
There are so many variables I was unable to “hear” because it has taken me years to even grasp the concept of many particulars of sound. Personally, i feel i am just now starting to slowly tune my ears to the most neophyte level of audiophile quality. I have a minuscule background in actual instruments (I took trumpet lessons for a year or so, until my father felt the instrument was more useful to a polite homeless person he passed daily on the street rather than my tone-deaf hands & ears.) I can also play twinkle-twinkle little star on my piano if i concentrate enough while following youtube based instructional videos…
The long winded point to this is that those 1010110001’s that get fed out of digital sources need to be and CAN BE tamed/tuned w/ what many consider snake-oil products before they take on the fine nuances the wacky folks who live and breath everything audiophile find them pleasing in some fashion to their distinctly and individually tuned ear holes. A DDC along w/ a plethora of associated accessories makes some kind of difference in many situations on the minutia. Fight me all you want, you won’t believe it till you can hear it yourself someday.
So, very high level thinking. In video we see the quality of 1s and 0s all the time in stutters, pixelation, desync, etc. Most streaming is basically udp/rtmp protocol where it just tosses the data at you and you catch what you catch, but a lot of places are taking up something like RTP so at the very least their sources have redundancy and a handshake to confirm correct transmission.
Not sure why not something similar for music can be done.
USB Audio uses the “isochronous” protocol it has no error correction, but it can detect errors. It uses that particular mode of transfer, because it was designed with USB1 in mind where bit rates were insufficient for additional error correction. Not that it really matters for any reasonably long USB cable errors will be measured at I’d guess the 1 in a billion bits range. i.e. at least minutes and probably hours apart.
Now caveat I’ve never measured errors on a USB cable, I have on network cables and for any point to point wiring with a well made cable they effectively never happen.
There are really 2 things DDC’s do depending on if the output is USB or SPDIF/AES, if it’s output is USB “reclocking” that output does nothing, USB has a clock, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the audio clock, like a network protocol, the sender gathers samples into packets and bundles them down a wire. The Dac then sticks those bits in a buffer, reconstructs the packet and then pumps the bytes out on it’s own internal clock.
What then does the DDC do in the USB to USB case then, well it can provide significant noise isolation you aren’t just sending bits down a wire, you’re sending voltage differentials that can be stacked on top of god knows how much noise. So it can isolate the incoming signal from the outgoing and provide a cleaner signal, the final quality being determined by the level of isolation, and the quality of the power used to regenerate the signal.
But you say my DAC has galvanically isolated USB, yes but how much did your DAC manufacture budget for that? did they have to compromise in it’s design for packaging? and how much did the DDC manufacture spend on it?
That does leave the question as to what can a USB cable do if it doesn’t change the error rate? And they do matter IME, my guess is it’s all about the rejection of RF noise.
Now the second sort of DDC is something that outputs SPDIF/AES/i2S, in this case the clock is in the signal and the DDC is actually generating that clock as well as minimizing the noise on the wire.
The DAC might still try and clean that up, usually it will use a PLL (time domain filter), but PLL’s work better with better starting clocks.
Either one of these might be a win depending on the DAC and how it handles SPDIF/USB, how good it’s internal clock is etc. I run my Lampizator Pacific via USB, my Pacific uses an off the shelf Amanero board for USB, but it has 2 ~$400 a piece clocks hung off it which it uses to generate the audio clock.
It was a marginal win over the NS1 via AES, probably because the internally generated clock was slightly cleaner than the externally generated one pushed over AES.
Are there go-to recommendations in different price categories for DDCs? Let’s say below 1K and below 2K new/used?
Would a $600 DDC still make a noticable difference in a chain or better to save more money?
And is there a streamer that can save me from a DDC? as I probably need one as well
I saw a really huge return going from my laptop USB to adding a DDC (USB → SU-2 KTE → AES), and the SU-2 KTE is under $1K new, but I imagine the returns you see will vary a lot depending on how bad your source is and how bad your DACs USB input is. (And I’m only just starting my journey looking at streamers now, so others can give better advice there.)
DDC’s: Matrix XSPDIF, Mutec, Denafrips has three models of increasing price. Antipodes has “reclockers” which are DCC’s. As you get into the high end they are more often called re-clockers.
PI2AES andAllo begin the streamers. There are some mass market ones like the IFI, then Auralic, Antipodes, Lumin, Aurrender, and then they go up from there. (Waaaaayyyyy up). As you get into the very high end they become a part of a DAC, like MSB, TotalDac, and even Lampizator.
A streamer is a DDC, in the grossest terms all the same things apply, except the input in an ethernet connection (or Wifi).
I use an Optical Rendu on my Pacific at the moment, mine is the Roon only version which they no longer sell, but they are under 1K used. The other Sonore rendu’s have a good rep, as do the SOTM solutions. Many people here also have SU-X’s and can comment on those.
You want to get off your PC/Phones USB first, D2D or streamers will both do that, after that what makes sense depends on what DAC your using, how good the various inputs are and what you are willing to spend.
When I had my Denafrips Pontus I connected the Denafrips Iris to it through i2s and believe it made a difference albeit a small one.
With the Spring 3 I didn’t use anything and now with the Rockna I think I might need one again (haven’t heard the Wavedream yet).
My sources are usually a MacBook Pro, iPad or Bluesound Node.
So my options are to get a DDC (maybe SU-6?) or to replace all the sources I guess…
This. It’s hard to do but computers and iPads are extremely noisy and did not have fidelity in mind. I felt I was at a completely different ballpark when I finally got off of my phone and PC for music.
I think they’re referring to getting off it entirely. In other words, putting your music files somewhere else other than a PC/phone/tablet (main source). But based on past conversations, you can probably still benefit from putting a DDC b/w a PC and a DAC. Even if it’s not ideal, it can serve as a reasonable compromise to some.
I have it between my PC and my Gungnir, using USB to that device and then coaxial from that device into the Gungnir.
The difference in sound is so minimal i would probably fail a blind test, but i use it anyways because others could hear a huge improvement and it was really cheap, hahaha.
I wonder how the Amanero compares to the JL they have now. The ECP walnut also uses an Amanero board, which is where i think most pf that dacs budget is.
The Amanero 384 is so “higher end” industry standard that if your device doesn’t use it, you’d be suspect of something or they better be explaining why they aren’t. And then if it’s legit the explanation comes with $$$ higher price tag.
) asked a question on DDC’s and what they possibly bring to the table.
in my head that somedays lights up and says, “Oh snap, this is cleaner, more vibrant, i hear space now, or better yet…now this is blackness”, or lastly something as simple as, “I stopped hearing my hard-drive ticking.”
