Firewire to SPDIF

Hey thanks for the responses. I use a Reimyo DAC so 24/96 is not really a requirement.
I had read in a couple of places that with more than 1 USB devices the quality of audio out can suffer hence the question.
Cerrot, How would you rate the M Audio ? I already have a Trends Audio UD10 but even with a battery pack it is nowhere near the resolution given by my CD transport.
The empirical audio products are supposedly fantastic but will wait for a USB3 version before investing in that..

cerrot, thats really great to hear
Have just placed an order for the M Audio and plan to use it via my Monarchy DIP into my Raimyo Dac

do Firewire cable quality matter ?

Will let you know about it once i set it up

Cerrot,
I have finally set up my firewire Solo. is there a breakin period ?
Compared to my Classe CDT-1 transport the sound is detailed but seems to have a little less of musicality and sounds a little hard. this was after 30mins of listening to them. it is definitely better than the trends UD10 in details though.
i will do a more detailed check sometime this week again.

Compared to what you have experienced the other culprit could be the Firewire card...

setup

laptop: Dedicated Dell D600 with minimum XP and 1GB ram
Firewire Card: Compaq with dual 6 pin out
Fire wire cable: 9 inch long 6 pin to 6 pin cable (from an old External HDD)

Solo Digital out via 1m Nordost Moonglo to a Monarchy Dip Classic
Monarchy dip is connected to a Reimyo DAP777 via DHL 110ohm XLR. rest of the setup is a Leben CS600 and merlin TSM MMe.

Cerrot,
Thanks a lot for the info

I am using a PCMCIA adaptor with 6 pin output. it appears to be thicker and of better quality, but will try the other cable as well
since a PCMCIA bus does not carry power i am using external power.

regarding the settings I actually increased the buffer to 1024, bypassed the mixer (since it is a winxp),

I was using foobar...but will try out J River as well !

will try to change it to your setup and revert back

Thanks again for the tips an the time taken to find the above info..really appreciate it

:)
BTW instead of using WASAPI you could use the M Audio FW as well to see if that is giving you any improvement.

I think the issue could be with the Firewire bus. I tried this out with my toshiba laptop which has a 4 pin firewire out and the sound became even more granular!. so that would mean that the firewire interface is perhaps a bottleneck.

BTW I tried the cplay player..very very basic but really good. am a bit busy at work the next few days but will try some more tweaking over the weekend.

Yeah :( this weekend I tried out a couple of options with different Firewire cables,better digital cable etc. stillc annot make iot sound as good as my transport..it is the "smoothness' in music which is missing..something which the Trends UD10 does much better but at the expense of details.
i even re-recorded a FLAC into a CDR and that too sounds better ... are you using any other driver ? from what i read M-Audio drivers are C$@#

It just may be a bottleneck. let me try to borrow another card and give it a shot because i got worst results with the built in I-Link in my toshiba laptop

Hi Al, Cerrot
2 days back i tried it with a Ornage link card which apparently uses an NEC shipset. cant really say it was better. my guess is Frewire cards+Laptop isnot good enough from an audio point of view..