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In Reply to: RE: Musiland Monitor 01 USD - late to the party, but... posted by Thorsten on December 17, 2009 at 10:35:40
If you are a music lover and not an electrical engineer it sounds pretty good, especially for $70. I usually use mine with toslink, but it sounded as good via coax as the SPDIF produced by my Lynx L22. I appreciate your point that it can be improved for a small investment, but it would be inaccurate to leave people with the impression that it is a piece of junk. It is in fact a great way to play high rez files via a USB port.
Follow Ups:
The easiest way to improve performance is to cut a usb cable at the PC output (Vbus Red) and connect a decent 5V supply to this and ground.
Also change the bnc/phono sockets to 75R. I just changed the phono to 75R and this sounds better than the 50R output.
Back off the digital output level to prevent 'hot' files from overloading the dac (from 100 to 95) and the unit sounds v good; much better than the 0404 usb. Also try KS using the WDM drive mode instead of ASIO. Disable the other not used.
I bought the Musiland after you praised it in a post a few weeks ago. I have been using mostly ASIO4All v2 with J River which sounds great. It sounds substantially better than the Lynx coax SPDIF using the Lynx ASIO driver, which surprized me. Is that the KS you recommend?
I may try the battery mod. Does it matter whether the + or - goes to ground? Does this make a dramatic improvement? Since I am primarily using toslink, I probably will not change the bnc/phono sockets.
The receiver chip in my DAC is a Wolfson wm8804. Maybe that makes a positive difference.
No, it is kernel streaming mode in windows xp. Foobar supports it but I have never used J River. Have a look under OUTPUT and see if this is available.
It is not possible to find a tight 5V supply using batteries. Li is too expensive and requires voltage regulation. Li-ion likewise for voltage. You may be able to use akaline at 1.65V in series but I don't suppose an AA cell setup will last that long. Still it may be worth trying. Bypass with a good 470 to 1000u cap. and DO NOT connect polarity wrongly. I use a ALW Jung type regulator.
You could always go directly to 3.3V supplied from a battery, lift the 3.3V leg output pin of the 3.3 V regulator & feed the battery 3.3V to this output pad! This 3.3V then feeds to a 1.2V regulator.
The local regulators are spec'ed at 1.3V maximum dropout voltage. So the minimum input voltage is 3.3+1.3=4.6V. I'll say 4 nimh cells should work well. (4.8-5V). I think the device consumes 200-300 mA, mostly the USB controller, so a 2500mah cell should last many hours.
I am done with rechargeable; they are nothing but trouble over longer term. They too can be noisy as well.
Hi,
Okay, it may seem that my comments on the Musiland stuff are very negative. That is perhaps because I am generally impressed with the engineering and maturity of the product and I feel that in the light of this the issues on such basic levels as I fond them are by far more infuriating than they would be in a bad product.
If the SPDIF outputs work well for you with your DAC, all the better. I can think of some most excellent recent DAC's (using non Cirrus Logic SPDIF receiver chips) that would/could struggle with this signal though.
Okay, what I like about about Musiland monitors:
Rock solid, easy to use driver software, works well, easy to get the best on that front.
General ease of use, having tested a number of alternative options this one is great.
What I think is bad:
No Mac or Linux Drivers. No option to use external power supplies (this could help tremendously).
What I think is positively UGLY:
Wrong SPDIF output impedances and levels (and poor waveform) in the 01 USD (note, these tend to be more common in PC audio products than you may think - Musiland are not alone there), which with many will kill the potential of High Rez sound files and in my experience even CD.
Badly handled and completely unnecessary switch mode supplies in the 01 US that make a mess out of the sonic potential.
That said, compared to some other stuff out there that costs more (EMU0404 USB anyone) the Musiland devices are quite an achievement...
Ciao T
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