Sonicweld or M2Tech hiFace usb to spdif converter

I’d not hang my hat on one poor review . Or reviews in particular. But the Hiface gizmo has gotten loads of positive comments from a lot of folks in lots of places! Here as well, if you check the archives.

Given it's near nothing cost, I'd recommend you go get one and see for yourself.

Whichever interface you wind up with, be it Hiface, it's newer more expensive, and more fully featured sibling, The "EVO", or some other one altogether... you're not going to be out much if anything. Tweek Geek has a money back policy and they are the N American distrib's for M2Tech.

in the CA review Chris said he used an Esoteric something or other... CDP? and some more upscale DACs like the Berkely and Weiss. $5K & $6K respectively to elicit his results. personally, I feel either that particular Hiface unit was a bad piece, or there was some remarkably poor mismatch in synergy somewhere in amongst all of his systems pieces for the Hiface to reveal anything like what was described in that article. Cabling?

it was easy enough to see something was surely up with the way that account was written in general... as well as how the Hiface was subjectively said to have operated. Vieled? soft? Dark? The Hiface possesses none of those characteristics given my own uses and interpertations of it's performance... not even remotely!

Merely pay attention to which driver you download as they are OS dependant. Macs use this or that, XP & older uses this and Win 7 & Vista use some other and one older version is available for Vista & 7 if the current one doesn’t work well with J River MC 14 or later. I needed to use the previous Hiface driver for Vista & 7, as the current release wasn’t working well with River Media Center. But all other media players had no troubles at all . ONLY MC 14 on my various pcs and then only with vista’s WASAPI output.

The Hiface BNC is what I use and it’s a real bargain unit and a real overachiever!

BTW2 the BNC or RCA cable you affix to it, does matter.

Do look into the EVO BTW but good luck regardless your pick.. or your path.

I've missed a few things here due to some outside issues... but even some current experiements with the Hiface unit + Oyaide silver coax cable prove substantial rivals for some really heady competition just last week at a friends house.

he has Bel Canto mono amps, Canton Ref speakers, an Anthem D2 sig proc, and an Oracle CDP.

playing the Hiface & oaydie got the sound so close to the oracle as that amount was simply inconsequential.

using the Hiface with either tubes or SS I've had no issues what so ever with ground energies being introduced into the audio by clicks or otherwise, once I'm using anything even close to a good computer.

I can get mouse moving noise thru my Lynx AES16 Xpress card at times using J River 15.

All my driver woes were with JR 14. Using JR 15 things have settled down. See? If you bitch enough things get fixed... usually.

So what is this "audio diverter" gizmo?

And you don't mean the EVO now costs $2400, do you?

input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ..... $2800 for a converter?

Absolutely, something besides fish in Denmark were rotten with that review of the Hiface USB converter over at CA. There were litterally thousands of positive accounts, and several posted ah, hem, 'pro' online mag reviews saying quite positive things about the gizmo and the answers from the usually in depth and articulate techically slanted CA author merely let rudimentary questions go unaswered or remain ignored.... like did you try another unit given your findings were so adverse to so many other positive accounts, as that one might have been wrong or somehow poorly made or broken??

As inexpensive as these M2Tech converters are with respect to many others out there it would seem a no brainer to have requested a second unit.... or sought out the reason for such adverse findings elsewhere in the setup

neither of the above however were adequately accounted for.

personally, on the heels of the glowing rave about the Hallide Bridge affair, it seems a tuff enough act to follow and then say the < $200 Hiface was a world beater of a bargain.

But more than that episode doesn't make sense there quite often in those reviews. IMO.

had I not posted an account or review of the Lynx AES 16 PCI xpress card regularly used as 'the ref' converter of choice.... there wouldn't be one still.

Seems an odd thing to me to not properly qualify a refference piece, AND one listed on the 'recomended parts list'. Everything else there was reviewed.

if nothing else it makes one say, "Hmmmmmmmmmm..."

RE 'Weld'
congrats on whomever came up with that idea. Sell 10 a year and ya got a great part time income. 3 grand for a USB converter. LOL

I think I'd rather give that $3K or so to Mr. Rankin, Mr. Weiss, etc, for their stuff instead and get more value for the money.

Good. That's one less item to investigate.

Again, thanks much.