Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

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A killer new soundcard for digital audio servers?

Posted by anevsky (A) on December 21, 2003 at 17:26:31

I don't know how many people out there are building silent (or near-silent) computers for their hi-fi's, but for those who are, I found an interesting product.

If you do the D/A conversion inside the computer (or even externally with a USB or Firewire sound box) - this card isn't for you. I own a Lynx L22, and find that while its D/A section is good, it isn't amazing. So, I'm back (again) to using a Wadia 860x as a DAC. I output the digital stream from the computer via SP/DIF to the Wadia. Why? First, no matter how well the D/A section on your sound card/box is - there is no way it can be as good as a robust DAC. The primary problem is, of course, the huge level of RFI present inside the computer. You can use an external box to get around this, but the wall-wart which comes with the box is hardly a "good" power supply. Think about how power-supply implementation has changed over the last decade - it used to be an after thought, now it is as important as anything else. So, while a Firewire or USB box is interesting, I don't think they are there yet.

A number of people have written me privately and asked: if you are outputting a digital stream to your DAC, why do you need a high-end soundcard? The problem is jitter, of course. As soon as you take that bit-perfect representation of your CD (ripped with EAC or CD Paranoia) and turn it into a "bitstream", you've opened the door for jitter. Bitstream's need to be clocked to make sure you are reading the right set of bits for the given sample. One off, and you're screwed. So, you want a good soundcard to be low on jitter - thats it.

To get to the point, I found a new card from Lynx the AES16. It only handles digital data, so you can't use it for D/A conversion. It also only handles AES/EBU, so if you're DAC doesn't have this input, it won't work. What makes this card attractive is that jitter reduction appears to be the sole reason for its being. You can read the specs, etc in the link below.

I haven't ordered one yet, but probably will give it a shot.

Best,
Adam

• Lynx AES16   (Open in New Window)

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