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| Model: | SRC 2496 |
| Category: | DAC Processors |
| Suggested Retail Price: | $249.00 |
| Description: | Upsampler/DAC/Anit-Jitter |
| Manufacturer URL: | Behringer |
| Review by Dynaudio_Rules (A) on January 13, 2007 at 13:29:52 IP Address: 69.245.75.35 | Add Your Review for the SRC 2496 |
For this review I am using an Adcom GCD700 CDP as the digital front end, the CDP is sitting on Black Diamond Racing Cones and has an upgraded power cord.Digital cables are all AudioQuest VDM1 s/pdif out to the Behringer SRC 2496 AudioQuest Raven AES/EBU out to a Berhinger DEQ 2496 DAC/Digital EQ.
Associated equiptment and cables are:
Anthem Pre-2L pre-amp with Mullard 6922 NOS tubes and an AudioQuest NRG2 power cord.
Aragon 8008BB amp with an NRG2 power cord and Dynaudio Audience 82 speakers.
Analog cables are AudioQuest King Cobra, speaker cables are Audio Quest Gibraltar.
I recieved this product and let it break in for 24 hours, not a long break in but broken in some none the less....but about the same as my other Upsampling piece of equipment.
The unit can upsample to 48, 88.2 and 96 as well as down sample to 32kHz...with the push of a button.
when being fed a digital signal it can use its own internal clock, it can format the out going signal to either s/pdif or aes/ebu and output word length of 16,20 or 24 Bit.
In my case I used 96kHz/24bit upsampling with the internal clock.
The sonics improved with just a short break in time. When I first plugged it in the sound was really dark, with a strong bottom end and highs that seemed to strain to push through.
The next day, the highs and mids had come into their own and the sound stage was wide, wider than I had known or heard in my system. The low-end was still full and round, deep and moved without effort. Like my other Upsampling unit the vocals seemed to appear out of thin air, but with one difference....the vocals had more weight, more body, fuller and more throaty with texture.
The smoothness associated with the de-jitter effect was the same but with a more natural affect than what I had heard from other Upsamping de-jitter boxes. In fact like the sound stage, the naturalness of the sound was more than I had ever heard in my system esp. with a digital front end. The Behringer made my digital music sound more like vinyl than I thought was possible.
As with most digital gear the power cord makes a difference, I tried a AQ NGR cord but I quickly switched back to the stock cord. I am sure with further break in and better power cords both Behringers DEQ and SRC 2496 would yield greater rewards. This combo is a keeper.
| Product Weakness: | None |
| Product Strengths: | Natural sounding, multiple upsampling choices, sound stage, ease of use and total flexibility |
| Associated Equipment for this Review: | |
| Amplifier: | see review |
| Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): | see review |
| Sources (CDP/Turntable): | see review |
| Speakers: | see review |
| Cables/Interconnects: | see review |
| Music Used (Genre/Selections): | Cassandra Wilson - Traveling Miles (1999), Incognito - Adventures In Black Sunshine (2004) |
| Type of Audition/Review: | Product Owner |
Follow Ups:
Thanks for the review. Based on your comments, the price and the fact that my Audio Alchemy DTI 2.0 and Pro died months ago, I decided to get one of these to use as a jitter reducer.
I paid $129 at zzounds.com, but after I ordered I found out that B&H is selling them for $95, which I hope I can get a price match on.
I have only played a few discs so far, but my initial impressions are favorable. Only negative comments I have is that it is kind of ugly, but it isn't designed for home use and the gain on the headphone jack is too set too high.
$95 with FREE shipping, just ordered...
...from (presumably) 44.1KHz?
Most ASRCs when set to run at supposedly "synchronous" sample ratios still remain asynchronous in actual operation, unless explicitly defeatable by the user or stated so in the documentation.....And if that's the case, depending on the "timing" of the output relative to the input, you can conceivably get different sonic "flavors" each time you play the disc when an asynchronous converter is running at a selected "synchronous" frequency, depending on the proximity of the triggering between input and output clocks.
a higher rate would be better than a lower one...why upsample to 88.2?
HowdyWell the ASRC chip it uses to upsample will have less error the closer to an integral ratio you get, i.e. 88.2 (= 2 x 44.1) is a lot better than 96 (= 320/147 x 44.1) On the other hand having a fixed 96k output can have it's own advantages. In any case it's not as simple as "higher is better".
-Ted
"Well the ASRC chip it uses to upsample will have less error the closer to an integral ratio you get, i.e. 88.2 (= 2 x 44.1) is a lot better than 96 (= 320/147 x 44.1)."Although the DSD based converters run by this golden ratio, the far-more-common ASRC chips do not. According to Analog's ASRC data sheets, the chips first oversample at an extremely high rate, then the output clock triggers the output to grab samples off the intermediate oversampled stream.
If all ASRCs ran "320/147", I wouldn't be complaining about it. But as of now, I cannot recommend any player or DAC that uses ASRC.
I first heard of this golden ratio from the late Julian Dunn of Prism.
HowdyIf you read the specs closer you'll see that what I said is true for ASRC. I didn't mean to imply that ASRC uses simple integer ratios as you can see where I expounded slightly in http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/digital/messages/126043.html . But the errors in interpolation depend on the ratios of output clock rate to input clock rate and their relative phase. It's a secondary effect but there none the less.
-Ted
I'm assuming there's a whole shed-load of (unnecessary) number-crunching/re-quantizing in converting 44.1 to 96KHZ.Every single sample re-quantized?
As I understand it, this is not the same as 'over-sampling' (it's done prior to A/D conversion and digital filtering), so surely using factors of the 'native' sample-rate has got to be the way to go?
looks like there is only one more step *division*
96 (= 320/147 x 44.1)
HowdyNope, it's more complicated:
This is Asynchronous Sample Rate Conversion (ASRC) vs. Synchronous Sample Rate Conversion.
With SSRC there is only one clock. Or to be more accurate the output clock is derived from the input clock synchronously: usually in a rational manner, i.e. twice as often as the input or 320 times for each 147 times on the input. The math to derive the output samples is fairly simple in principle, e.g. for 44.1 to 96 put in 319 zeros between each input sample, filter the stream at 22.05 and output every 147 sample. If you are careful you can save a lot of math by not calculating the samples you don't need and skip over all of the multiplies by zero...
With ASRC there are two independent clocks, the input and the output. In a theoretical sense you upsample the input to a high rate and then use the output clock to pick samples at the right time perhaps using interpolation between the samples when the clocks aren't perfectly aligned (and they will rarely be aligned.) ASRC has the advantage that the output clock can be very controlled (low jitter) and the DAC can be optimized for that rate. It has the "feature" that any input jitter is encoded in the data. The results of this can be either better or worse than SSRC depending on the input jitter and the jitter sensitivity of the DAC proper...
-Ted
Wow, there is a lot that goes into this whole upsamping DAC, clocking, jitter thing....all this just to get good sound out a digital media.The more I try to tweek, wire, upsample, de-jitter, and eq the nasty digital sound out of CD's, the more frustrated I get.
BTW, I did listen the 88.2 and I noticed a greater length of decay and a slight sense of air....maybe because of my room though, that added a bit more lively sound to the music....which wasnt good in my already lively room.
Ok I will have a listen.....Good thing about this unit is I can go from 88.2 to 96 with a push of a button on the fly....
Why would you pick 88.2 instead of 96K? Neither would be synchronous conversion.
Wouldn't 24bit/88.2KHz "up-sampling" leave the original 16-bit words unmolested (padded to 24 bit), and simply interpose mean-values between each sample?You think a "free (96KHz) lunch" is to be had?
All data will be newly created to match that internal asynchronous clock rate. If you want to keep the same data, you can only have one master clock, usually from the source, in which case the other clocks are synced to that frequency, so you can have true integer rate upsampling like in almost all DACS and CD players that use a digital filter (8x oversampling). You can't have a DAC that uses its own clock crystal do integer upsampling since the clock crystals can never be exact integer multiples due to initial accuracy and temperature drift.
I was just reading the user manuel, and am I correct in understanding that this also has a DAC and a ADC in it? If so, one can also use it as a digital to anaolog converter and or a anaolog to digital converter. Why would you need another DAC in the chain if this is so?
Tim
yes it does do dac and adc as well as anti-jitter, you really dont need another dac in the chain....but in my case I am using a digital eq in the chain....which also happens to have the same dac.i guess i could put it either before or after the eq....but if i use the eq first i would have to go in via optical or aes/ebu, neither of which my adcom cdp has....
Any chance you could tell us how the SRC 2496 sounds with it's own dac?
Tim
Will do today....I'll let you know...
How does the Behringer compare to the Monarchy???
I like the Behringer....much easier to change sample rates and it sounds a bit more organic....the fact that its 3 times less is a plus too
Aby chance you could tell us how the SRC 2496 sounds with it's own dac?
Tim
For upsampling/jitter reduction, the Behringer SRC2496 is a no brainer for $129.00. Throw in the nice sounding headphone amp and decent Dac and ADC and the deal is that much sweeter. One look at the high tech front panel and your friends will see that this is a seriously powerful machine as are it's siblings, the DEQ2496 and DCX2496. Wait until you hear your DEQ with the Direct Out Mod for the analog. This will take the sonics to a new level, easily surpassing the likes of the Dac 1.
I finished the direct out mod on a SRC2496 I got about a week ago and it greatly improved the sound. I haven't completely finished permanent setup and have the top off and the rca jacks and caps, etc laying inside the case but they are mounted with no chance for movement or shorting. The problem I am having is an intermittent pop, presumably from static buildup. I haven't had anything like this in my system before and was wondering if you had experienced this on the DEQ after doing the mod. Maybe it will go away once the I get the rca's mounted and the case put back together?Another mod that really adds to the weight and resolution of the unit is to install a choke in series on the outlet leg of each of the 4 voltage regulators. I used some small toroidal chokes 100mH, 1 ohm dcr. Seems to do a better job than decoupling caps alone to clean up the dc power to the chips.
Also, I think the review above overstates the sound qualities of this piece of equipment. With mods it can sound good because of the high quality ADC and DAC and resampler. It has the typical low cost opamps, surface mount caps and resistors, and cheap electrolyics for coupling combining to give less than exciting stock performance. However, with the features it has and the potential for modifying to a much higher level, it is definately worth the price.
I don't use the analog out of the SRC very often but sometimes get some random clicks from the DEQ or DCX when the SRC which precedes them is upsampling to 96khz. This goes away when 88.2 is selected. This has been reported by other users running stock units. I don't think that the direct out mod would be the cause although you may want to jump the new inductors to see if the extra resistance could be to blame.
nt
Do you have a reference for the mod? Thanks.
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