I’m bored and it’s my birthday month (excuse to splurge on myself ) so I finally decided I have had enough of being connected to a laptop especially a MAC-book. It has honestly got to have the absolute worst output next to a phone that is possible. It’s a shame to have all this nice equipment on my desk and to never actually hear any of its potential. I splurged just a little bit and went with a used Primare NP5 Prima network player. My desktop does not need more, I just needed to get off the damned laptop, the USB on these things is the dirtiest output in the whole house. It’s a shame to know I can have such nice quiet backgrounds on the equipment when it’s installed on just about anything else i use.
For those of you still feeding your equipment w/ a USB off a laptop I cannot emphasize enough what a dirty connection these are (in my own experience). I can take any DAC & Amp combo and walk from room to room in my house plugging it into better and better sources and the difference as you scale up your source end is appreciable in all the detailed areas we talk to death about. Background blackness, separation and detail retrieval all seem to be negatively affected using my Mac book and simply improve w/ just about any other source. Heck even my little Pi streamer has an appreciable improvement. (No USB output built into it)
It’s not necessary to break the bank buying a new music source, I’m just saying I have found that almost anything (other than a phone) is better than feeding your music through a laptop, maybe your fancy PC’s work better, I can’t speak to those since I have no direct experience. Happy listening, that is all I’ve got to bullshit about for now.
For my little setup (as compared to yours) I run Amazon HD music out from PC via usb to my Denafrips Iris DDC to my Denafrips Pontus via i2s then from there to my 4 port switch witch. From that switch I run to my Bryston BHA-1, my Asgard 3, my Feliks audio Echo and also my MLP. Upper end PC with decent usb. I run Pangea cables for usb, coaxial, and optical. Besides the level of the Pontus it is the DDC that creates the blackest background for me. Having a headphone amp that is a really good match for my headphones is also helpful. At some point I may go to a dedicated streamer but not as of yet so I guess I will muddle through…LOL!!!
I guess this it the right place to ask this…
Is it the USB as a connection that gets hammered or is it because it’s USBfrom a computer that’s the problem?
I’m going to test that in any case once I get back from traveling and compare USB to AES and Coax in my case (that’s what I can connect between my G1 and Wavedream without a DDC) but was wondering that…
It depends. But most of the time it’s the usb from a basic pc is the problem, some usb options have the potential to sound great, but that’s limited by plugging to a noisy average pc. On older dacs (and some newer ones even), the usb as an input can be genuinely lackluster, but with most modern dacs you don’t have to worry about that and the limitation more lies with what feeds the usb than the usb itself
Assuming you have both a good usb and spdif source, there are some dacs that might prefer being fed over usb vs spdif or vice versa, but it depends on the dac, and one input isn’t automatically worse than the other
Yeah that’s what I figured.
That’s why I tried to buy the G2.1 for its galvanic isolation upgrade over the G1. I’ll do the I/O comparison on my gear but honestly I’m at a point with my sound quality that I’m satisfied. Even if a DDC improves it by 1-2% which is basically where we’re at with all the high end gear, I think I rather have one box less. Still trying to figure out how I feel about an expensive cable though…
I can follow Mon with what he means.
If one would improve the USB board like Amanero does, it is already roughly a good approach.
When I unpack my Little Dot Dac1 it becomes very clear with what is said how bad USB is/was/can be.
There the DDC is a good help.
With modern Dacs you slowly notice that more attention is being paid to the USB port by some manufacturers, which is also a good sign.
And I am personally prepared to pay the price for it.
Apple is quite ungrateful and not necessarily advantageous for mobile devices on the road, in my personal opinion.
Unless you use Roon or Audirvana for upscaling.
I can definitely see advantages with streamers and there are good to interesting approaches.
Dacs with direct streaming are the latest thing you see, but they are still capable of expansion.
Some streamers would also be generally expandable from a technical and software point of view.
The most primitive I have tried but already seen from a technical point of view are the Pi with good power supply or the Sonore products.
Simple, yet solidly built without a lot of frills.
The Mano or Mani from Magnahifi also makes a good impression.
They probably have most things very well covered until there are technical developments, if I have held that up to the Agen.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
It is supposed to be the conqurent of Raspberry.
Technically, it doesn’t make a bad impression.
Runs on open source systems like various Linux systems, Android would also be possible.
The accessories offered by Raspberry are still somewhat underdeveloped.
The price is currently cheaper than a Raspberry Pi.
Rough idea from me the board has a Pcie Express connector.
The Matrix Element H card supports open source if I understand it correctly so no driver needed.
Point 2 in connection with the Singxer Su 2 supports according to info:
Native Linux with UAC2 compliant kernel, using the system’s own driver, (tested on Ubuntu and Daphile systems, based on INTEL X86 platform).
4, Android OS 4.2 and above, the device needs to support the OTG function. Generally speaking, Android 9.0 and above systems are supported by default. It is recommended to use it with specialised players below 9.0.
Depending on the operating system, if there is one that also supports Roon, the whole package with a clean power supply could possibly function as an interesting streamer.
Am I seeing this correctly or am I tending to see it wrong?
Unfortunately I haven’t found much about Pine so far except that it seems to be a small community.
Which is also still somewhat unknown.
It doesn’t even look bad to have a small mini PC streamer if everything fits.
All these single board arm cores can be used as a streamer, they’ll all be similar in performance to a Pi, even a Pi is gross overkill for streaming audio data.
They’ll all be comparable to or a small step down from entry-level streamers like the Ifi, uRendu, etc.
Linear power supplies, etc. will improve them all to a point.
What you can’t get past is the sub optimal board designs and unnecessary hardware they have shoe horned into the form factor. How much impact that has is probably debatable.
But just a stupid question.
For example, the Pi doesn’t have a Pcie slot.
With the Pine and the Matrix element H audio card, it should theoretically be almost better than with a PC, I would say, if the power supply would also fit, or do I see this as overrated in that respect?
Signal paths would be much shorter, the power supply would also be much smaller than a 450w + power supply from the PC.
That should be enough, oh yes, I still have Singxer Su 2 lying around, as long as I find a compatible open source system that supports everything.
The only thing I have seen is that there is no Audirvana but maybe Roon.
Your trying to sole a problem with the Matrix card, you shouldn’t have.
It’s trying to provide isolation from the “computer” it’s connected to.
Part of the point of using something like a low powered arm board is you reduce that problem at the source. PCIE would be for example no better than a well design Pi shield.
Both are better than a PC as a source.
FWIW whatever OS image you picked for the Pine would still need a driver for the Matrix card, I don’t know how common that is in the various Linux Kernels.
What things like say the Rendus (or any other streamer that isn’t just an off the shelf board) can do that you sticking an off the self board in a box can’t is they can be very careful about what they include in the box and how the PCB is laid out.
How much impact that has vs say using a better power supply has is open for debate.
These sorts of streamers aren’t a bad way to go, but TBH I wouldn’t try and get too clever with which specific board you want to use. I certainly don’t have the skillset to look at one and declare it better than another.
The Lampizator Pacific has an off the shelf Raspberry Pi 3 in it providing the network connection, with it’s USB out connected to the input of the USB board used for standard USB input. It does have it’s own dedicated probably very expensive linear power supply providing power.
And while a USB signal from an external USB streamer is better IMO it’s not night and day.
I said this elsewhere recently, when it comes to streamers, something is better than nothing, and DIY aside for a moment, treat it like any other component, you should expect to double what you spend to get a definitive improvement, as/if you step up from something.
Another factor with Pi ecosystem is the number of hats available to give add clean power, reclocking and dacs between the pi and your output allowing you to build it out into a significantly better performing system than the basic board.
Agreed. Many people think about RasPi as some nerdy, cheap DIY thing. Many HiFi people would be suprised in how many Streamers some base RasPi board is included.
Same thing applies to highend audiophile LAN switches… without TPLink, most wouldn’t exist
Once I realised just how complex the hats can be I realised that a self build would be far better than anything I could afford prebuilt. The dac hat I used in my build takes the roll of master clock away from the pi and is combined with a second hat that galvanically isolates the GPIO connection. Pi and hats are then on individual linear power rails. Granted I haven’t looked into it that much but I don’t think I could find that kind of specification anywhere near my budget. The fact that the pi is still a mini computer adds all kinds of bonuses. Since finishing the build I ended up getting a Volumio subscription and I can now plan to add a CD drive at a later date as well as potentially using an ADC function.
Streamers are the new main stream. A lot more of these quality devices, most with their own ecosystems for those who want it (an a lot of people do… Look at Sonos) and the technology is plug and play enough where you don’t need to be technical to set up.
Like I said, the new main stream way to listen to music.
@dB_Cooper Please help me understand. I’ve thought about streamers for my modest system and realize the benefits of them vs the laptop. However, I have
the Bifrost OG and it seems a waste to not use the unison usb tech in it. Yet, almost all streamers I’ve seen do not have usb out. (ifi Zenstream has one)
Do the streamer benefits outweigh the unison usb? Or possibly, at my level of
Bifrost/Asgard the usb is “good enough?” I do like what I have, but am always
looking to get the most out of it that I can, within budget. Thanks.
The answer is… it depend on a lot o factors. The quality of the streamer and the power supply you’ve got connected to it. It also depends on how bad your laptop is (noise coming out). All laptops are bad, the only thing worse than an laptop is a phone so first thing you have to understand is that your signal is originating from the worst source. The Unisom USB is good, but even when I had the OG Yggy, I found I liked the Coax input better so Unison is not a panacea, it’s just a better implementation of USB into a DAC.
The main reason to go with a streamer is to get your signal output from something other than a laptop or table or phone. But streamers will range in price a lot and can be just as expensive as an expensive DAC. A streamer will also more often than not have some re-clocking capability which if you combine the re-clocking of what is a cleaner source to begin with than your laptop, people often see GREAT improvement. There are a couple of Pi2AES being sold here that will perform head an shoulders better as a solution than a laptop out, I mean a laptop is a bad place to start.
That’s why a lot of people that don’t want to give up the PC (myself included) for their desktop, will put a DDC or a USB reconditioned at the very least, between the computer and the DAC. Read this wonderfully written article on our front page. It will get you better positioned to ask questions based on your particular situation because like I said, the answer is it depends on a number of factors but the good news is that there’s a lot of improvement to be gained with a relatively low entry fee when you move into streamers, DDC and USB conditioners.
) so I finally decided I have had enough of being connected to a laptop especially a MAC-book. It has honestly got to have the absolute worst output next to a phone that is possible. It’s a shame to have all this nice equipment on my desk and to never actually hear any of its potential. I splurged just a little bit and went with a used Primare NP5 Prima network player. My desktop does not need more, I just needed to get off the damned laptop, the USB on these things is the dirtiest output in the whole house. It’s a shame to know I can have such nice quiet backgrounds on the equipment when it’s installed on just about anything else i use.
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