AudioCircle
Industry Circles => NuPrime Audio => Topic started by: audioguy213 on 28 Aug 2016, 01:57 am
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What input do you guys recommend for digital audio out of a computer,
optical or USB into the Nuprime gear?
Any special USB cables required?
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There seems to be very little in it. Only because the USB cable I am using is the correct length, that is what I use. Some will say the USB is better
At least with an optical cable there is no electrical connection
I was reading of a device that removes any electrical connection (shared earth, etc) on a USB connection between a computer and an amplifier. Of course the person writing the article sang its praises, but his scientific argument was sound. Its akin to converting the USB to a LAN cable and back to USB the other end. You can already get such devices, but audio fidelity was not included in the design criteria
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I've not tried the usb yet, but I've recently found the Lifatec optical cables compare very well to very good coaxes out of my Oppo BDP-93. Very reasonably priced way to experiment, too. Many others like the Lifatec too.
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I use Lifatec for optical out, yes, from macbook into Dac10
other people said something about limited bandwidth with optical cable format, in another thread, positing that USB is a superior connection,
I started this thread because Nuprime indicated something about their USB nor needing dejitterer's -
and I Was just wondering if they had an in-house opinion on best connection from a mac or PC when using their gear.
Maybe they have USB tweaked to the point that they think it is superior to optical digital, I dunno - rustydog said to start a new thread on that topic.
I have never tried USB out, I always considered it sub optimal in my head, with the power on the line, etc. but I would try it if Nuprime said it was superior.
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A real simple answer. USB.... optical goes through conversion on both ends. Therefore for Redbook output on my spinner I use Coax. I have had a few audio engineers tell me straight out, avoid optical if at all possible. But most important reason to use USB versus optical or coax from computer is because DSD. You can't send DSD through optical or coax. DSD is vastly better with the ESS chips. I even up convert all of my flac downloads to DSD. It just plays back better.
The re-clockers do indeed work. I challenge you to put Wyred 4 Sound Recovery unit inline on your USB connection. A vast majority that have are surprised at the improvements.
On the coax connection I use a Wyred 4 Sound Remedy. In a conversation with Jason he had me try playing some Redbooks with and without the Remedy going into a DAC-10H. He thought there would be little if any difference. He was surprised when I reported back that the DAC-10H did a fine job on it's own, but, the Remedy moved it into an entire new world... pretty much... WOW... what an improvement! More dynamic range with much better impact. More open, air between the instruments. Much better separation of individual instruments... instruments are more defined on Redbook CDs.... Recovery does similar things for the USB chain... both add the Femto clock....
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I don't suppose there is any way to upscale FLAC files to DSD using JRiver (ver 21 on a Mac)? I have tinkered about with the Playback settings, specifically Output Encoding, switching on and off DSD in DOP or 2 DSD in DOP and unless it is set to "None" there is no sound
Using a KORG DS100 DAC, you can, if you set the Output Encoding to 2xDSD, make the DAC play everything in DSD mode, but I could not detect any audible difference. On the KORG, a light appears on the front panel when it is paying DSD files. Some people frown on this DAC since it uses some processing in the computer to achieve this
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I up-convert all my flac files to DSD using JRiver 21. I do not convert on the fly, but instead convert the files and store them on my music server PC as DSD files.
I keep a separate folder for DSD downloads and flac downloads. I also keep the up-converted files in their own folder. Therefore in Roon I can enable and disable the folders that I want. This makes it easy to compare the original PCM download versus the DSD converted. The DSD sound better to me.
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"I challenge you to put Wyred 4 Sound Recovery unit inline on your USB connection. "
Challenge accepted, I have ordered one to try.
I will try to feed USB to Recovery Unit to DAC-10 and see how it goes.
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Cool! I think you will like it. I can direct you to several reviews stating how good it is including a member of another forum who took the challenge and was so amazed that he added two for for each of his systems. Two of which have Esoteric DAC/Spinners (yes those are over $10k each and he was amazed at the difference).
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reviewers are idiots and schills,
I trust you Randy, I will send it to you if I dont like it.
does it matter what USB cable you use from laptop to Recovery?
Say no so I can save $300.
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Well the review I was talking about is not a reviewer but one of us :).... The standard USB cables are not bad, and I am sure will work fine. I know they include a basic short USB to go from the Recovery to the DAC (NuPrime). I did upgrade mine to decent (not real expensive) Wireworld cables. The purple ones, whichever that is... I did after having it a while add an iFi iPower. Again subtle but very slight noticeably improvements. Nothing in the order of how much the Recovery improved the music. How I originally described it was that that it made my digital music files sound more like vinyl, without the hassles and pops and clicks....
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seems like curious cables and a linear PS are recommended for RUR, I will give those a shot too.
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I thought it was worth it. I added a similar level Wireworld Coax cable for both the input and output of the Remedy. I decided that the power supply with the Remedy was fine, similar to the ifi iPower that I added for the Recovery.
I am a believer in a better level of cabling. Not the crazy level stuff mind you, but a better level. Even if it is not night and day I believe it just makes sense that a better power cable or inter-connects are worth it. A step up, but I do not feel my equipment is of a level to add the crazy level cabling...
I use Wireworld USB cables x2 to come from my Music Server (Highly modified PC) to the Recovery on to the DAC-10H
x2 Wireworld Coax cable coming from the Marantz SA8005 spinner to the Remedy on to the DAC-10H
Tributary RCA cables going from the Marantz to the DAC-10H for SA-CD disks
Wyred 4 Sound XLR cables going out of the DAC-10H to the SST Son of Ampzilla II amplifier
Monster Cable Y connector out of the DAC-10H to an Audio Technica RCA cable to go to the REL subwoofer
Kimber Kable speaker wires going to the MC speakers
Wireworld power cables for both the DAC-10H and the Marantz
Audioquest power cable for the computer
Richard Gray High Tension power cable on the amplifier (only because a friend with a MBL system was up grading so he pretty much let me have this extreme high level power cable :) )
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USB, coaxial and optical in that order from best to worst. As someone already pointed out, optical goes through conversions on both ends and has less bandwidth than USB or coaxial.
A decent shielded USB cable is sufficient.
As for device such as "Wyred 4 Sound Recovery", it might sounded different when you hear it for the first time, but we can't determine if it is going to make any difference engineering wise. This issue came up several months ago during R&D. You see, our factory actually did design and build a high-end device for such purpose (isolating USB noise), and it is battery powered, for a client. The end result, even with battery powered device, is debatable. So we decided not to offer such a product under NuPrime.
Regardless, I am keeping an open mind.
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As with everything it is definitely to each his own. I very much appreciate the Recovery and Remedy. In discussions with Jason about an issue going through Remedy he asked me to try it with and without. His thoughts were that it would not help and might actually hurt the sound from the DAC-10H. I did give it a fair back and forth on several CDs and came away saying it was a fairly huge improvement to the sound quality. As an added benefit it takes the 44.1 kHz signal from the Redbook CD and up samples it to 96 kHz.
My questions to Jason was why was the DAC-10H displaying 44.1 when I know that the signal is actually 96 (and previous DACs displayed it as 96). He felt my assumption that it was actually playing at 96 but displaying at the original 44.1 was correct but he went back to his engineers to confirm this. I very much appreciated the follow up. Shows care for customers and a real sense of pride in his company!!!
Anyway, here is his final follow up e-mail (I was impressed with his doing as he said he would and going to his engineers!).
"Hi Randy,
There are two ways to display the sampling rate of the input music:
1) Channel status embedded in the data or
2) detecting the sampling rate from the data.
DAC-10H only use the extra channel status data to display the rate, so we suspect that Remedy device did not update the sampling rate channel status info after the conversion.
I was incorrect to state that DAC-10H does internal sampling conversation. It does not do that (neither up or down) and simply does the decoding. Therefore it has to decode the higher sampling rate from Remedy otherwise you won’t hear any sound, even though it displays the original sampling rate.
Thanks
Jason"
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USB, coaxial and optical in that order from best to worst. As someone already pointed out, optical goes through conversions on both ends and has less bandwidth than USB or coaxial.
A decent shielded USB cable is sufficient.
As for device such as "Wyred 4 Sound Recovery", it might sounded different when you hear it for the first time, but we can't determine if it is going to make any difference engineering wise. This issue came up several months ago during R&D. You see, our factory actually did design and build a high-end device for such purpose (isolating USB noise), and it is battery powered, for a client. The end result, even with battery powered device, is debatable. So we decided not to offer such a product under NuPrime.
Regardless, I am keeping an open mind.
Thank you VERY much for your comments,
I look forward to trying out USB with my Nuprime gear,
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Check this out... Could be a real winner according to this review. In a big fan if iFi products and the higher end AMR line they trickle down from. Those dudes definitely know what they are doing. I'm currently still trying to decide if my IDA-8 is actually an upgrade from my iFi Micro iDSD / Parasound ZAmp combo. I'm not totally sold yet, but I almost prefer the sound of the optical out from my Mac into the NuPrime... But reading about the short comings of optical have me second guessing. This little baby could be an answer...
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/09/ifi-spdif-ipurifier-entry-level-pricing-next-level-results/
- Woody
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Wow, I'd rather spend the money on a proper spdif output device rather than a "fixit"...
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What input do you guys recommend for digital audio out of a computer,
optical or USB into the Nuprime gear?
Any special USB cables required?
toslink supports the highest sample rates than spdif or usb
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toslink supports the highest sample rates than spdif or usb
For consumer digital audio, Optical uses fiber optic cable terminated with TOSLINK connectors and Coaxial uses 75 ohm coaxial cable terminated with BNC or RCA connectors, but both are S/PDIF format.
The majority of TOSLINK S/PDIF interfaces are limited to 96kHz while some can achieve 192kHz sample rates, Coaxial S/PDIF is most always rated to 192kHz and USB Class 2 Audio is rated to 384kHz.
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This is true, but also, as important to me anyway, DSD in native can only be sent through the USB connection. DSD is very important to me and I believe the ESS chipset sounds best with DSD files!
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toslink supports the highest sample rates than spdif or usb
Reference?
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Staright from NuPrime DAC-10H's manual:
Inputs:
• 1 x USB Digital
• 2 x Coaxial Digital S/PDIF
• 2 x Optical Digital S/PDIF
• 2 x Analog Stereo RCA
Outputs:
• Stereo RCA (Line out)
• Stereo Balanced (XLR-3 socket pre-out )
• Balanced headphone amplifier (XLR-4 socket )
• Unbalanced headphone amplifier (6.3 mm jack socket )
• USB Sampling Rates: 44.1KHz, 48KHz, 88.2KHz, 96KHz, 176.4KHz, 192KHz, 352.8KHz, 384KHz and DSD 2.8MHz (DSD64) , 5.6MHz (DSD128) 11.2MHz (DSD256)
• S/PDIF Sampling Rates: 44.1KHz, 48KHz, 88.2KHz, 96, 176.4KHz, 192KHz
As you can see, both Coax and Optical are S/PDIF and can do sample rates up to 192KHz. USB can sample up to 384KHz and also DSD up to DSD256 (11.2MHz). Coax is better than Optical because the digital signal is being sent straight out of the player to the DAC for decoding while Optical requires being converted to send across the line and unconverted back to the digital signal prior to being received by the DAC.
According to EJ Sarmento, the genius audio engineer behind Wyred 4 Sound and SST, the original reason that he developed the Remedy unit was because the only output from many Apple units was Optical and it was so poor. The Remedy was developed to solve this problem and then later Coax re-clocking was added to the unit to give some improvements on this end also. But he highly recommends using Coax versus Optical if you have the option to do this. EJ told me this as when he was explaining why you should also use Coax over Optical if your gear supports it (ps... I live near him).
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Check this out... Could be a real winner according to this review. In a big fan if iFi products and the higher end AMR line they trickle down from. Those dudes definitely know what they are doing. I'm currently still trying to decide if my IDA-8 is actually an upgrade from my iFi Micro iDSD / Parasound ZAmp combo. I'm not totally sold yet, but I almost prefer the sound of the optical out from my Mac into the NuPrime... But reading about the short comings of optical have me second guessing. This little baby could be an answer...
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/09/ifi-spdif-ipurifier-entry-level-pricing-next-level-results/
- Woody
If optical sounds better then it does. Don't get caught up in the Mumbo jumbo and what is supposed to sound better. I remember using optical on my Logitech Touch as a transport and thinking this doesn't really sound any different than my good coax. I was surprised. I had been brainwashed about reading how toslink is inferior.
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Reference?
there is no signal loss with optical (compared to copper) and the max speed is almost at the speed of light(only limited by electronics)
as for reference google fiber optics
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there is no signal loss with optical (compared to copper) and the max speed is almost at the speed of light(only limited by electronics)
as for reference google fiber optics
No, there are potential losses in both, though via different mechanisms.
Consumer grade spdif/toslink also has bandwidth limitations dependent on the material and length of the cable. Depending on the age of the transmitting/receiving end, there are also hardware limitations as the original specs topped out at 48k and "hi rez" wasn't a thing yet.
Fiber optics is not the same as consumer level optical connections for audio. That's a pogostick to jetpack comparison; they'll both get you somewhere, but beyond that the similarities end.