On transports

[ranjeetrain]

Whoa! That is a very interesting project. In case of interest, my system is based on Ubuntu, but what makes the audio work is KXStudio Had it not been for the fact that I have a Firewire device, which means using jack I would never have needed to go beyond Ubuntu, but now I am used to KXS and its way of handling jack, and the fact that it works. I am very happy with it, and would stick with it even if I went plain USB or back to a PCI card. Kernel is not real-time, but is "low-latency". But jack (it seems, I can't explain) runs in realtime mode, and if not (got my settings mixed up only last week) there will be xruns, resulting in dropouts on my system.

All my problems with PC audio have been over the past few years. Once I got a decent sound card installed, I was getting fantastic results from my old machine which was, I think, a P4 without any struggles. Yes, I do believe that a PC can be a wonderful music player, but I have had my fair share of it not being.

Yes, there were some very bad cards in early days. Very poor dynamic range, poor SNR, in short, very poor technical specifications. In other words, they were utilitarian. But once PC was recognized as a serious contender for being the central device in home entertainment, things changed.

Technical specification of current generation of high end sound cards outdo their CD counterparts by a huge huge margin. Once the battle of electrical noise is won, in current times, a computer is a serious competition to all but most expensive of CDPs.

 

[gobble]

Well, I am not really familiar with everything that it has. It has an external power adapter, which can be kept at some distance. If used with an external DAC, then it does not need to have two clocks. The clock of DAC will be used for playback and the Rasp Pi will be for playing, control etc.

No I was talking about a crystal to clock the spdif digital signal only.

--G0bble

 

[manoj.p]

No I was talking about a crystal to clock the spdif digital signal only.

--G0bble

I don't think it has a SPDIF port. There is only a 3.5mm analog audio out.

Digital out through HDMI and USB is the only option at the moment.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

ranjeetrain, would really like to hear more of your thoughts on sound cards. Perhaps something for another thread. If I remember rightly, the first soundblasters were 8-bit, and not suited to music at all.

 

[kaushik]

All guys fiddling with transports should know :
SB touch is one thing which when modded gives excellent quality and flexibility.

Audiophile Touch mods - take two

soundcheck's - audio@vise: Touch Toolbox 3.0

 

[jai1611]

I thought I'd share my experience with CD transports, which may be of use to others. First some details of my setup:
DAC: Lampizator level 3 (gen 3)
Amplifier: Rethm Gaanam
Speakers: Rethm Saadhana v1
Cables: ICs and speaker cables are Rethm, digital cable is Black Cat Veloce. Power cables are a mish mash of Einstein, XLO and some generic ones.

My transport journey has been all over the place. The first transport I used with the Lampizator was a cheap and cheerful Nad C515. Even with this, the Lampizator was so far ahead of anything else that I heard that I was satisfied. However, I knew that the DAC deserved something better so managed to convince Dr.Bass to part with his beloved Teac. Unfortunately, the CDP was lying in Bangalore for over a year before I could finally pick it up. In the meantime I used the Yamaha CD-S2000 and a Goldenote Stibbert as transports. My observations on the various transports:

Nad vs Yamaha: the Yamaha is a very solidly built machine and was an all-round pleasure to use. Sonically, it had a bit more resolution and a slightly more spread out soundstage.

Yamaha vs Goldenote: I honestly cant make out the difference. Maybe some minor changes but nothing I would say with conviction.

Goldenote vs Teac VRDS 10: a very noticeable improvement in the resolution and impact of the bass. Also a more airy and precise soundstage. These were immediately apparent on the first CD. Subsequent listening also shows more resolution - not in your face but suddenly noticing something extra in very familiar recordings.

I also has a dedicated music PC which outputs SPDIF through an E-MU 1212m sound card -> monarchy audio DIP classic (reclocker) -> Lampizator. To me, the same CD ripped into the pc using EAC and played back through Foobar doesnt sound as good as a good CD transport. Maybe the same level as the Nad - not sure though. I suspect that the gap could be narrowed and perhaps even closed through a more optimised pc setup (maybe an off ramp or Art Legato). However, given that I have a lot of CDs and quite enjoy listening to them, I'm in no hurry to pursue this.

p.s. a special thanks to Dr. Bass for letting me have the Teac

p.p.s. I also have a Lampizator kit which fits a tubed digital output on CD transport. May experiment with this at some point on a backup cd transport (maybe the NAD)

An update on my experiments with PC audio:
- tried running the sound card output through a Behringer SRC2496. Seems to bring the sound in focus somewhat.
- also been experimenting with a trial version of JPlay. While my sound card cant use the hibernate mode, even as a Foobar plugin this does seem to offer a bit more resolution

I have recieved my Lynx AES16 card today. This is supposed to be top notch solution to get a digital signal out of a PC. Will try it over the coming days and try to run some comparisons against the CD transport.

 

[jls001]

I have recieved my Lynx AES16 card today. This is supposed to be top notch solution to get a digital signal out of a PC. Will try it over the coming days and try to run some comparisons against the CD transport.

Will stay glued to this "channel".

 

[manniraj]

I don't think it has a SPDIF port. There is only a 3.5mm analog audio out.

Digital out through HDMI and USB is the only option at the moment.

Even I am contemplating to go with this solution of having the less power hungry Raspberry Pi and using the ODAC to get the sound out to my receiver. But as far as the USB DAC as one of the output devices (compatibility) is concerned for Pi it is still work in progress. Here is the detailed thread for the same. I think this solution once perfected will be one of the best solutions of having a dedicated music pc with the least power consumption and small form factor. I was actually thinking of incorporating the Pi and the ODAC in a small enclosure (preferably mini-itx case) without any fan.

Thanks

 

[gobble]

I have recieved my Lynx AES16 card today. This is supposed to be top notch solution to get a digital signal out of a PC. Will try it over the coming days and try to run some comparisons against the CD transport.

Waiting ...

Waiting ...

--g0bble hyeah:

 

[jai1611]

Waiting ...

Waiting ...

--g0bble hyeah:

Will take a while - busy at work during the week :sad:

 

[jai1611]

I spent a bit of time over the last two evenings to get the Lynx card set up.

I started with installing it in my audio pc in place of the E-MU. Uninstalled the old drivers, installed the new lynx ones and updated the firmware on the AES16. Unfortunately, the things refused to run with the Lynx mixer showing no sound in any channel being picked. I tried to undo various tweaks I had done to windows services but to no avail.

I finally got frustrated and decided to re-install windows. Fortunately, I use an SSD and dont have any non-audio stuff on this pc so a quick process. Took an hour to do the install and update windows. Even after that, the problem didnt go away.

Getting worried about a faulty card, I decided to try it in my HTPC (which uses an AMD setup instead of the Intel H61/i3 in the audio pc). In this one, it worked in the first try with no tweaking etc. I guess the issue with the other pc have to do with compatibility issues. Have temporarily moved this to my audio rack. Will install the audio software today evening or tomorrow and give it a proper try. If all goes well, I'll transplant this into the audio pc chassis (which is quiter and uses a much better power supply).



Should have an update on SQ by the weekend. Fingers crossed!

 

[jls001]

Hope you have disabled the onboard sound card? Or chosen the Lynx as default sound device?

Also, the driver installation steps in pages 9 to 16 in the manual is fairly convoluted and unstraightforward. So you may like to refer to them once more.

Further, are you able to make it work (on the HT PC) using the supplied breakout, or custom?

 

[jai1611]

Hope you have disabled the onboard sound card? Or chosen the Lynx as default sound device?

Also, the driver installation steps in pages 9 to 16 in the manual is fairly convoluted and unstraightforward. So you may like to refer to them once more.

Further, are you able to make it work (on the HT PC) using the supplied breakout, or custom?

The installation is actually very straight forward in Win 7 and I selected it as the default sound output.

I checked on the Lynx support forum. Apparently, there is a compatibility issue with the Intel H61/H67 boards as they use a PCIe-PCI bridge instead of native PCI.

 

[jai1611]

I spent the weekend rebuilding the audio pc in the new chassis. Also bought the licensed version of jplay. Spent a few hours listening.

Overall, the computer transport sounds comparable to the CD transport. The differences are subtle enough that they could be down to the digital cable rather than the transport itself. With my CD transport, the Black Cat Veloce and Belkin Synapse sound audibly but subtly different. To me, the pc transport sounds tonally a shade lighter while the CD is a bit denser. This is based on a limited AB comparison using a single album. The rest of the time, I've just been listening and havent noticed any shortfalls with the pc.

For reference, the details of my pc setup below:
- Gigabyte motherboard with AMD A6 CPU
- Intel SSD drive for OS, 2tb WD Green drive for storage
- Seasonic X560 power supply, quite lancool chassis
- Lynx AES16 sound card with latest firmware and driver
- Windows 7 ultimate
- Jplay 4.3 running in fullscale hibernate mode
- Windows 7 ultimate OS
- Belden AES-EBU cable with HD26 connector at the Lynx end