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RE: Squeezebox vs. EMU 0404 USB as Transport for SPDIF

Posted by andy_c (A) on February 6, 2008 at 13:58:03

In Reply to: Squeezebox vs. EMU 0404 USB as Transport for SPDIF posted by C. on February 6, 2008 at 12:18:03:

I have had the SB2 (not SB3) and E-MU 0404 USB in my system using S/PDIF output via Toslink. The digital part of my system is as follows:

Network = Ethernet over power line using Netgear adapters
Dell 600m laptop with 1.6 GHz Pentium M processor with 1 GB of RAM
Drive with music is a RAID5 array in another computer, accessed from the laptop via the network.

USB out into E-MU 0404 USB
Toslink out of E-MU 0404 USB into Behringer DEQ2496 Toslink in
Toslink out of Behringer into Benchmark DAC1 Toslink in

With the SB2 I was going from its Toslink out to the Toslink in of the Behringer above - same Benchmark DAC1 in both cases.

I have not compared them side by side. I got the E-MU when the display of the SB2 failed. Slim Devices wanted $90 to fix the SB2, so I got the E-MU instead.

I've found the sound of the E-MU to be very good and I prefer it to the SB2. I have found it to be able to reveal lots of detail without sounding the least bit harsh, somewhat like my experience with high-res. I have not used it on anything other than 44.1/16 files though.

I have had a number of problems with playback software though. In order to use S/PDIF with the E-MU 0404 USB, ASIO must be used in the playback software. Here is a summary of the problems I've had:

Foobar2000 0.9.5 with native ASIO: You set up ASIO in the menus, and specify which outputs are activated (Analog 1 = none, Analog 2 = none, S/PDIF 1 = left, S/PDIF 2 = right). Once this is done, playback is completely free of glitches of any kind. However, when you reboot, a bug in Foobar's ASIO support causes it to forget the configuration, even though the display looks like the config is remembered correctly. To fix the problem, one must delete the config, and re-enter it after each reboot. This is a known problem with the Foobar2000/E-MU 0404 USB combination and has been discussed here before and on hydrogenaudio.org - with no solution.

WinAmp 5.5 with Otachan ASIO: This remembers the ASIO setup after each reboot just fine. Initial setup is counterintuitive. You specify a channel offset of 2, meaning that the two active channels are 3 and 4 (S/PDIF 1 and S/PDIF 2 respectively). However there is a problem when gapless playback is selected. For the last song of a playlist, the last second or so is rudely chopped off. Disabling gapless playback fixes this, but causes an annoying gap when listening to live performances where consecutive tracks contain continuous music. I abandoned WinAmp because of this problem. I don't know if this is a WinAmp problem, an Otachan plug-in problem, or an E-MU driver problem.

MediaPortal with Symphy's Pure Audio ASIO plugin: This is an interesting player. It's for audio and video use, and appears that the UI was meant for a television. But the sound quality is great. The native ASIO support does not work at all for S/PDIF with the E-MU 0404 USB because of the inability to do channel assignment. Native ASIO is not bit perfect either. But Symphy's plug-in fixes this problem. It remembers the setup fine after reboot, and does not have the problem of truncating the end of the last song of a playlist either. However, I had a different problem. Every hour or two, the playback simply stops in the middle of a song, and I have to restart MediaPortal to get it going again. I don't know if the problem is with MediaPortal or the ASIO plugin. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with getting the music from a network drive, as I have not experienced this with Foobar2000 or WinAmp. At any rate, I abandoned MediaPortal because of this problem.

At present, I am limping along with Foobar2000, re-entering the ASIO configuration with each boot. I am thinking about using JRiver Media Canter. It would be great if it fixed all my problems.

Edits: 02/06/08

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