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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: RE: Streamer to Dac Connection posted by AbeCollins on April 7, 2025 at 07:49:47:
This "really old guy" does not agree on the innate superiority of USB. Think of all the decrapifiers that have been invented to clean up USB signals. And more than in the other systems, I think, the quality of the cable matters more for USB than for the others leading to ultra expensive ones. There are too many great performing and sometimes very expensive streamers putting out spdif, AES/EBU and even I2S to write them off.
That I2S was never meant for outboard connections is irrelevant. Remember, USB was "meant" to run printers! There are too many folks who report that I2S is the very best to ignore it. And as long as the cable is kept under 1 meter, the cable is not an issue.
Fact is that I2S is the simplest system, and simple is often good. Virtually every streamer uses an RPi or something equivalent and I2S appears directly at its GPIO. I2S thus requires no conversion before going to the DAC. Going to spdif is a conversion, combining the digital signal and clock (which are separate in I2S) on the same wire and consequently limiting the bandwidth. That's why spdif cannot carry native DSD or higher data WAV files. And outputting USB is even more of a conversion.
As spdif and I2S use synchronous communications, the use of high performing (though sometimes very expensive) clocks within the streamer can raise the performance of the system to beyond what USB can deliver.
All that being said, there are too many good brains behind all of these and great quality has been reported from all of them, USB included.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Streamer to Dac Connection. USB? I'm Not Sure. - Mel 21:22:28 04/09/25 (0)
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