There’s an article on our front page about digital sources which demystifies the whole of the subject a fair bit.
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I dunno. The author seems a little sketch.
@db_Cooper I enjoyed the article!
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Skimming this thread yesterday made me want to A/B optical vs coax out of my Singxer SU-6. So I did that and the coax sounds a tiny bit veiled when compared to the optical. Thought it was interesting.
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Now why would you go and do that? Now you have to buy a high end coax cable.
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That would make me doubt myself, doubt my cable, clean the contacts and try with another coax 
Decent cable, Cardas Parsec BNC to BNC with an RCA adapter for my Parasound preamp. Possible reflection issue due to being <1.5m, but I didn’t want that much excess cable so I got it as short as possible. Optical is sounding great though, Lifatec glass.
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If it sounds great then that’s all there is to it. I’m a purist though with cables and an RCA adaptor for the BNC connector is something my OCD couldn’t live with.
Not an electrical engineer so I’ve no clue what parallels can be drawn but in the RF world every time there’s a split introduced VSWR increases roughly by 1.5 dB of loss. The connectors themselves if they’re quality add very little, about .2 dB of loss. But in the case of an adapter, you have the connector end, the adapter and the other connector end, that’s .15 (let’s split the difference) x .15 x.15. That’s not even accounting for the mechanical connection between the connector and the cable or surface to surface between connectors.
Nothing to lose sleep over, but I’m OCD with my cable management and best practice.
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I heard it was better to do BNC to BNC with an RCA adapter rather than BNC to RCA cable. Thoughts?
As straight through as possible with the fewest breaks is best practice. I wouldn’t screw around re-terminating the Cardas though. Probably best to try something off the shelf with BNC (75 Ohm) and RCA on the other. I’m sure you can find something very decent used for not a lot of $.
Then again I wasn’t kidding. If you like how it sounds withe optical, why bother? Too many variable to start chasing and suffer the audiophile what if disease.
There are a lot of practical reasons why you’re seeing the results you’re seeing all my theoretical blah blah up above is just that, theoretical. The real world has a way of peeing on theoretical expectations. LOL
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Singxer SU-6 has both BNC and RCA. My preamp only has RCA. Would you recommend BNC to RCA or RCA to RCA?
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Then just do the RCA. BNC is great if you’ve got it at both ends and good cables for that are a dime a dozen in the used market.
There are some components that do Single Ended AES over BNC but I doubt you’ve such a setup.
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Cool appreciate all the good advise as always!!
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Preach!!
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Some find him dry, but his first 4 minutes help explain and visualize why it is beneficial to get off of the PC
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The described clock-reference is a bit misleading since most clocks are based of a 100MHz Base Clock (which the OCing folk knows not to touch since it will very likely break everything).
If someone here knows their way round Linux (as in: The Linux Kernel) and feels like jumping into a pit of thousand nails: Try getting an RTAI patched Linux to cooperate with a MADI-interface card.
The result would be deterministic (mostly) timing and electrical isolation (assuming MADI via Fiber).
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Phew, very far-fetched theory.
So I’m at the source if anyone wants a Black Forest cuucock watch
As a PC user, the noise of the PC bothered me more over time.
When I rebuilt one 2 years ago and set everything to silent, I had peace.
Before that, I used the Matrix Element H in the old PC, which is now installed in the new one.
The Singxer Su 2 was added later and I actually have peace.
I once had a Blusound Node 3 there for a short time that only ran sporadically.
But when it was running, I didn’t find the sound particularly good.
I sent it back because it was horrible for me even in the Kofort.
I would like to give the Ifi Zen Stream another chance.
But I can’t judge whether it will really be better then.
I understand the deeper meaning of the Pc that it is rather suboptimal because of the signal paths. With streaming they would be shorter.
But the question is: Is it true?
Does it make sense to go to a streamer because of the sound performance?
I also understand that it is more comfortable to use.
Or do we also have to talk about implementations of the streamers?
The video is otherwise not necessarily badly made.
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I remember watching that he progressed to use a Grimm streamer fed by an SotM switch
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PC’s are enormously noisy devices, you want to isolate in some way from that noise.
A streamer will do that, but there are other ways.
IME a ~5K network bridge (read streamer) is a significant step up from something like a Pi2AES, even with a $300 power supply attached.
The NS1 changed the way the Chord Dave performed, fairly dramatically for the better, my opinions on that are probably in a thread somewhere on here.
Having said that I think the Optical Rendu ~$1000 sounds better via USB on the Pacific than the NS1 does via AES, but the Pacific has a very good clock on it’s USB input.
It’s all in the clock and power supply.
But like everything else you have to be rational about expenditure a $5K NS1 or DCS Network bridge makes no sense unless you have commensurate expenditure or more in a DAC.
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You can do a lot to quiet a PC of errant/stray noise, but it’s far easier, more effective and cheaper to not start your signal there in the first place.
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My knowledge is limited to ignorant on the subject.
Let’s say a streamer like the Ifi Stream is purely from the base where the LAN cable is plugged in and goes via USB to the Singxer Su 2, I could imagine that there is relatively much “quiet” in the signal, so it should be better in terms of sound.
What probably won’t work is software like Audirvana/Roon, which are not usable in this respect.
Since nothing more arrives at the PC.
So you would probably have to rely on 16/44 streaming if you use Tidal.
I think @dB_Cooper recently posted some cool PC mainboards that were designed more for audio.
Other than that, I personally don’t know of any solutions that might be able to be kept smaller in terms of cost.
The one Rendu I would have been itching to get my hands on, which was also within budget and would have been fully adequate for my needs, is unfortunately no longer being manufactured.