Triode's USB 24/192 plug in - sound quality impressions

[garym]

To get a real idea of what computer music should sound like try listening to jplay xtreme kernel out using foobar2000, usb out from the laptop to a vlink 192, absolutely stunning sound.

for anyone interested in jplay, there is a long thread at hydrogenaudio.org. If one is not in the mood to read the thread, the short takeaway is that "jplay" seems to be smoke and mirrors....

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=92856

[Jeff Flowerday]

don't know if it is just ignorance or spite that causes these outbursts from you, most unfriendly.

I'm confused, which is untrue? The fact the the vlink 192 isn't galvanized isolated on the input or that there are others on this forum that just repeat what you say?

[Triode]

To conclude, the Touch is just too noisy to live in revealing system. The EDO mod shows up the inadequacies of the spdif out, but the EDO mod introduces noise itself, not least the 2500 per second usb interrupts.

I would suggest you need to be careful making blanket statements such as this. At best this is a statement of what you hear in your system and at worst its possible that you have an expectation bias of the changes (cf your assersion that EDO 0.7 and 0.6 are vastly different... or tuning buffers beyond their max value makes a difference...)

I think what we can say is that in any computer based music system there may be some level of cpu activity related noise which is present on the power rail/ground plane. Whether this can be detected on the output interface will be hardware design specific and what impact this has on the downstream components will be very dependant on the construction of the downstream component. In this case it sounds like your usb-spdif device is suseptible to noise on the usb interface. Its likely than many well implemented async usb dacs may be less suseptible, others will be.

However the assersion that Touch is worse than a PC is a blanket statement which I don't think you can stand by. It will depend on the PC, its operating system and specifically the output interface hardware and its power rails. There is simply too much variablity there to be able to say that it will be inheriently better or worse that Touch.

As for how the touch output process influence sound quality - I suspect that the main issue here is that there is so little going on within touch that you can detect the impact of indiviual software processes/tasks on the power rails. On a generic PC there will be many more active threads and so I suspect the background cpu activity/noise is far more diffuse. However if you look at specific outputs such as usb then you will see regular interrupts which are handled by the kernel in just the same way as touch (everything uses ehci based usb chipsets for instance). There will also be application layer things which can be tuned, but the impact this has on the output will be very dependant on the hardware implementation.

To summarise - I think the best you can conclude is that with your vlink 192 you can detect more noise from Touch than from your PC. I don't think this should put people off using the touch - it may mean they want to look at true asyc dacs (where there is a fixed clock is next to the D/A converter and there is no spdif/pll)

[SBGK]

for anyone interested in jplay, there is a long thread at hydrogenaudio.org. If one is not in the mood to read the thread, the short takeaway is that "jplay" seems to be smoke and mirrors....

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=92856

whatever

[SBGK]

I'm confused, which is untrue? The fact the the vlink 192 isn't galvanized isolated on the input or that there are others on this forum that just repeat what you say?

whatever

[SBGK]

I would suggest you need to be careful making blanket statements such as this. At best this is a statement of what you hear in your system and at worst its possible that you have an expectation bias of the changes (cf your assersion that EDO 0.7 and 0.6 are vastly different... or tuning buffers beyond their max value makes a difference...)

I think what we can say is that in any computer based music system there may be some level of cpu activity related noise which is present on the power rail/ground plane. Whether this can be detected on the output interface will be hardware design specific and what impact this has on the downstream components will be very dependant on the construction of the downstream component. In this case it sounds like your usb-spdif device is suseptible to noise on the usb interface. Its likely than many well implemented async usb dacs may be less suseptible, others will be.

However the assersion that Touch is worse than a PC is a blanket statement which I don't think you can stand by. It will depend on the PC, its operating system and specifically the output interface hardware and its power rails. There is simply too much variablity there to be able to say that it will be inheriently better or worse that Touch.

As for how the touch output process influence sound quality - I suspect that the main issue here is that there is so little going on within touch that you can detect the impact of indiviual software processes/tasks on the power rails. On a generic PC there will be many more active threads and so I suspect the background cpu activity/noise is far more diffuse. However if you look at specific outputs such as usb then you will see regular interrupts which are handled by the kernel in just the same way as touch (everything uses ehci based usb chipsets for instance). There will also be application layer things which can be tuned, but the impact this has on the output will be very dependant on the hardware implementation.

To summarise - I think the best you can conclude is that with your vlink 192 you can detect more noise from Touch than from your PC. I don't think this should put people off using the touch - it may mean they want to look at true asyc dacs (where there is a fixed clock is next to the D/A converter and there is no spdif/pll)

re "I think the best you can conclude is that with your vlink 192 you can detect more noise from Touch than from your PC"

or as I put it the Touch is too noisy

would be interested if you could get the usb irq frequency down from 2500 hz, to me this goes some way to explaining the thin digital EDO sound or is it the vlink 192 that is causing the irq frequency to be so high ?

[adamdea]

I would suggest you need to be careful making blanket statements such as this. At best this is a statement of what you hear in your system and at worst its possible that you have an expectation bias of the changes (cf your assersion that EDO 0.7 and 0.6 are vastly different... or tuning buffers beyond their max value makes a difference...)

I think what we can say is that in any computer based music system there may be some level of cpu activity related noise which is present on the power rail/ground plane. Whether this can be detected on the output interface will be hardware design specific and what impact this has on the downstream components will be very dependant on the construction of the downstream component. In this case it sounds like your usb-spdif device is suseptible to noise on the usb interface. Its likely than many well implemented async usb dacs may be less suseptible, others will be.

However the assersion that Touch is worse than a PC is a blanket statement which I don't think you can stand by. It will depend on the PC, its operating system and specifically the output interface hardware and its power rails. There is simply too much variablity there to be able to say that it will be inheriently better or worse that Touch.

As for how the touch output process influence sound quality - I suspect that the main issue here is that there is so little going on within touch that you can detect the impact of indiviual software processes/tasks on the power rails. On a generic PC there will be many more active threads and so I suspect the background cpu activity/noise is far more diffuse. However if you look at specific outputs such as usb then you will see regular interrupts which are handled by the kernel in just the same way as touch (everything uses ehci based usb chipsets for instance). There will also be application layer things which can be tuned, but the impact this has on the output will be very dependant on the hardware implementation.

To summarise - I think the best you can conclude is that with your vlink 192 you can detect more noise from Touch than from your PC. I don't think this should put people off using the touch - it may mean they want to look at true asyc dacs (where there is a fixed clock is next to the D/A converter and there is no spdif/pll)

Triode thank you for your sterling efforts to provide something tangible and useful namely usb and 192 output capability

I'm afraid that getting involved in any discussion about subjective improvements in this area is inevitably going to get you into intractable exchanges from beyond the frontiers of reason. This forum has already seen the rise and fall of certain cults with similar leadership

Why would anyone want to use a usb to spdif converter from a device with S/PDIF? If you wish to retain your sanity I would recommend liberal use of the ignore button. Do not attempt to get into a pissing competition with a skunk.

Or to put it another way: "Bad Company is like a disease/who lies with dogs shall rise with fleas"

[bobertuk]

Triode thank you for your sterling efforts to provide something tangible and useful namely usb and 192 output capability

I'm afraid that getting involved in any discussion about subjective improvements in this area is inevitably going to get you into intractable exchanges from beyond the frontiers of reason. This forum has already seen the rise and fall of certain cults with similar leadership

Why would anyone want to use a usb to spdif converter from a device with S/PDIF? If you wish to retain your sanity I would recommend liberal use of the ignore button. Do not attempt to get into a pissing competition with a skunk.

Or to put it another way: "Bad Company is like a disease/who lies with dogs shall rise with fleas"

Sorry - couldn't resist. A simple will suffice as a sign of full agreement with your comments.

Bob

[mlsstl]

To conclude, the Touch is just too noisy to live in revealing system....

That phrase -- "revealing system" -- has become one of those grossly overused terms in audiophilia and has so much subjective baggage attached that it is meaningless as a descriptor.

Whenever someone asks me to hear a "revealing system", I find I'm just as likely to hear an edgy system with an unbalanced frequency response as I am to hear one that sounds wonderfully natural.

But then I've always been one to scratch my head as to why some are attracted to systems that seem to magnify faults instead of just playing music.

[adamdea]

That phrase -- "revealing system" -- has become one of those grossly overused terms in audiophilia and has so much subjective baggage attached that it is meaningless as a descriptor.

Whenever someone asks me to hear a "revealing system", I find I'm just as likely to hear an edgy system with an unbalanced frequency response as I am to hear one that sounds wonderfully natural.

But then I've always been one to scratch my head as to why some are attracted to systems that seem to magnify faults instead of just playing music.

And that's just ones that magnify real faults. The ones that magnify imaginary ones are the worst.