larry_s
Responses from larry_s
| Cardas Clear USB cable... anyone tried it? The only way a USB cable can make the music sound different is if it allows bits to be corrupted, i.e. cable doesn't meet spec. Serial transmission (serdes, 8b10b encoding)is a totally different world compared to S/PDIF. It's quite easy to see if ... | |
| Why not a run high quality USB cable Yes, USB 2.0 spec is 15 feet. You may get away with longer with slower devices. Also, you just need a cable that meets spec - $20 or so. The only way a USB can "change the sound" is if somehow bits are uniformly changed to alter the sound in a uni... | |
| USB DAC and/or Musical Servers with USB 3.0 port? But Sidssp, 3.0 is 1 higher than 2.0!! :^) | |
| Do I need ASIO for Windows 7 ? Windows XP and ASIO works just fine. If you are just sending PCM out a USB port there's no reason for anything as long as you configure your "player" correctly. Foobar can be configured not to change the bitstream, same for J. River Media player.I... | |
| New Mac Mini Outputs I'd use USB output with an asynchronous USB based DAC (if you can afford one). | |
| ASIO/ JRiver versus Windows Media Hi Jay,Since you are just sending PCM to your USB port, if you hear differences it is because one of the players is changing the "bitstream". I've never used WMP or tried to set it up for playback. J. River Media player can be configured to not al... | |
| ASIO/ JRiver versus Windows Media Jay, where/what is doing the D/A? I used J River with and without ASIO and there was no discernible difference. I rip .WAV and send PCM out USB to decoding in external DAC (Ayre QB-9). I stuck with ASIO because it removes some layers of software s... | |
| Who has found happiness giving up on DACs? Not me too. My DV50 is now just around for DVD-A and SACD. I got a Ayre QB-9 and I'm very happy. All my songs are now just a click of a mouse away in any order I choose. | |
| Music server with Modwright Transporter as source Unless you are going to support hundreds of streams, get the slowest (in terms of RPMs) drives you can. They'll run cooler and suck less power. Don't worry about the absence of TLER. If a raid controller depends on TLER, I'd look for another contr... | |
| Happy with USB DAC? Some rambling included.. I have an Ayre QB-9 and love it. The key to using a computer as a front end is to make sure the audio source is not modified by the software before sending it out the USB port. I use a netbook with external USB drive and the free Windoze based Med... | |
| asynchronous USB dac or jitter reducing device With asynch USB the only jitter you have will come from clocking the data from the USB data buffer in the DAC "box" to the DAC chip itself. There is no clock recovery or clocking of data from the source to the DAC "box" similar to what's done with... | |
| Upgrade advice If you are just sending PCM from a computer from lossless or uncompressed files, it shouldn't matter what computer or software you use. There's nothing complicated or non-deterministic about reading a file, decompressing if needed, and sending it ... | |
| External firewire hard drive to go with Mac Mini. Dracule1,I don't know what drives WD puts in their "black boxes". I only have access to "raw" drives from manufacturers. In general, especially light home use, any of their drives should be fine. Same for most manufacturers. | |
| Transport and DAC or Upgrade CDP? "Best to get in front of the curve and consider a oppo 83SE. The developing format for audio is blu-ray."Yes, hot on the heels of the success of DVD-A and SACD. (Classical SACD is a marginal success.)I read that the Oppo is a nice sounding unit fo... | |
| External firewire hard drive to go with Mac Mini. The WD 2TB drives (green, not black) should be a good choice. They spin at 5400 rpm (vs 7200 rpm for most full size SATA drives) and by default have decent acoustic management. The black ones should be ok too but you don't need the extra speed and... |