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RE: better sounding digital out ?

Posted by hfavandepas on September 30, 2009 at 04:47:21

In Reply to: better sounding digital out ? posted by Les C on September 20, 2009 at 04:20:51:

I tried quit a few interfaces in my cMP optimized PC for digital interfacing to my Lavry DAC.
(so only using them for digital interfacing, not using their DAC’s)
* PCI
- ESI Juli@ S/Pdif toslink or RCA
- EMU 1212 M S/Pdif or RCA
- LynxL22 XLR AES/EBU
- Lynx EAS16 XLR AES/EBU
- RME HDSP 9632

* USB
- EMU 0404 S/Pdif S/Pdif toslink or RCA
- ESI GigaPort DG ADAT toslink

* PCMCIA
- EMU 1616 M S/Pdif or RCA

In my cMP setup the Lynx AES16 definitely sounds the best. And with a step down the Lynx AES16 is followed both by ESI Juli@ and LynxL22 digital out. These two, both sound the same to my ears in my setup.

After Lynx EAS16, ESI Juli@ and LynxL22 dig i/o the differences of all other mentioned digital interfaces above, are minimal. They all sound much the same. Differences between them are very subtle and less than the subtle differences between versions of cPlay.

I think Cics recommendation for the ESI Juli@ is indeed a very good one. Especially because Cics also takes in consideration the quality of the software (device drivers, ASIO, ect) . If you consider the price of an ESI Juli@ it has definitely the best ‘sound per pound’.

But you can’t go wrong with all of the above mentioned digital interface versions.
There’s only one assumption though: that your receiving external DAC has good jitter suppressing / re-clock qualities.

XP tuning & optimization and power supply optimizations all have a much bigger impact on sound quality. Especially carefully choosing a quiet low ripple ATX PSU (preferably with smoothing caps added) and/or - the very easy to do - power optimization of the P4 pin with an linear power supply.

Don’t let people on this forum confuse or distract you with discussions on that S/Pdif or toslink, or this or that, can’t be any good. That’s pure nonsense. It all depends on if the manufacturer did a proper implementation. Best professional studio DAC’s money can buy (Lavry, Prism, Weiss, ect) all use S/Pdif (or the balanced high voltage version AES/EBU).
Read the recommendations and contributions of those manufacturers on the http://www.gearslutz.com forum.
Their recommendations are: if you can: use balanced XLR AES/EBU, keep cables and connections as short as possible and use a decent quality cable connection (which aren’t necessarily ridiculous expensive ones)

So which one for digital interfacing? My choice would be:
PCI: ESI Juli@ or Lynx or RME.
USB: ESI, EMU.
Firewire: RME

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