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SMSL 400 AKM 4499 DAC, new toy.

Seb, so you came to post just be outraged, sweet move.

I'm using the fifopi, not the older fifo boards. Are you saying Ian's fifopi doesnt deal with the jitter from the pi when fed by his lifepo battery psu? What a design failure, you should let him know if that's the case.

I'd be keen to hear why you think I used to get usb breakthrough noise from the macbook pro when using mouse or trackpad, 2011 model, Yosemite, itunes. Though of course I have neither of the affected dads anymore and dont use the mbp with Ian's dac stack.
 
sq225917 said:
Seb, so you came to post just be outraged, sweet move.

I'm using the fifopi, not the older fifo boards. Are you saying Ian's fifopi doesnt deal with the jitter from the pi when fed by his lifepo battery psu? What a design failure, you should let him know if that's the case.

I'd be keen to hear why you think I used to get usb breakthrough noise from the macbook pro when using mouse or trackpad, 2011 model, Yosemite, itunes. Though of course I have neither of the affected dads anymore and dont use the mbp with Ian's dac stack.
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Sorry, the intention wasn't to come across outraged lol. Just share my POV, apologies if that offended you.

As mentioned, Jitter isn't the only point to be discussing, I guess ultimately my post wasn't effective.

As suspected, a quick google validated, it is to do with noise, emi, ground loops or a combination (would need the hardware to work backwards to identify which one exactly).

That is why your current dac's with galvanic isolation don't share the same behaviour..

Some references for your reading:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/low-end-theory/874445-audio-interface-ground-buzzing-noise-imac.html
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5610451
https://forums.tomsguide.com/thread...-moving-mouse-or-scrolling-with-mouse.410847/
https://forums.tomsguide.com/threads/interference-static-crackling-popping.425585/
 
He’s sensitive :) as many of us are.

Galvanic isolation is often held up as the gold standard as though it’s perfect but clearly it’s far from it as all implementations differ. Perfect galvanic isolation would block dc, which would be unfortunate.
 
clivem2 said:
He’s sensitive :) as many of us are.

Galvanic isolation is often held up as the gold standard as though it’s perfect but clearly it’s far from it as all implementations differ. Perfect galvanic isolation would block dc, which would be unfortunate.
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Completely agree :) Quite a few assumptions made when it comes to digital.

Sounds like the M400 could be a winner though.

Vinyl is much easier.
 
sq225917 said:
The aex is notoriously high jitter and it contains a really noisy smps with high earth leakage. BT from computer into dac will be better.
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My experience of BT, which is admittedly limited to iOS devices as sources, is that BT performance is very much dependant on the quality of the receiver in the DAC and codec used to transmit from source to DAC. For example, BT from my iPod into an Arcam irDAC-II is astonishingly good. Conversely, when I tried BT from same iPod into a Chord Hugo TT 2 the quality was so poor it was unlistenable. YMMV.
 
@ttm, sure it's about the combination not each in isolation.

@seb, I'll pull my scope out tomorrow and see if I can spot any action dependant noise on the usb output from my mac and also via the smps brick.
 
misterdog said:
Not yet.
The first thing that struck me about the SMSL was the lower noise floor, the second was that several layers became more 'visible' in the sound stage depth. The backing vocalists behind Leonard Cohen became a 3 dimensional entity separate from Leonard.

The rest of my system is here. http://www.audioflat.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1008&p=17296#p17296
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That has been my experience with the D90MQA as well. Exceptional rendition of depth and image dimensionally in a digital product, rivaling analog.

MQA version costs $100 more, which is the right business model, avoiding the usual arguments.
 
dtd said:
Many were feeding their IAN DACs with RPIs, and sometimes the USB Bridge Signature.

Having owned both (see my latest For Sale thread - had the USB Sig + Shanti for a while too), they're very decent VFM and very listenable sources, but against say an Sonore OpticalRendu (yep, I owned this and sold it too!) they too left quite a bit on the table especially in transients.

Anyway, commence "but they measure the same" wars :-D
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What do you use now out of interest?
 
iansr said:
What do you use now out of interest?
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dtd said:
Many were feeding their IAN DACs with RPIs, and sometimes the USB Bridge Signature.

Having owned both (see my latest For Sale thread - had the USB Sig + Shanti for a while too), they're very decent VFM and very listenable sources, but against say an Sonore OpticalRendu (yep, I owned this and sold it too!) they too left quite a bit on the table especially in transients.

Anyway, commence "but they measure the same" wars :-D
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dtd said:
. Once I really upped the ante on both the source quality (NUC i7, passive case, industrial RAM), the quality of power feeding the source (SuperCaps in this case), along with some vibration treatments.... well the German DAC came flying out ahead in the end after all.

So yes, and I appreciate I'm certainly going to get a lot of "but ASR says they measure X" responses, if you feed the DACs with similarly OK source quality.... they will sound about the same.
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I see that the smsl m400 uses accusilicon oscillators and altera high speed clock but I don’t see any mention of what the Soncoz uses.
Does anyone know?
 
iansr said:
What do you use now out of interest?
Click to expand...

I went back to my T+A DAC 8 DSD, although this time it now has a copper top/bottom plates instead of alu + panzerholz underneath the PCB upgrade (Taiko Audio provided, although they dont have any left). It's a 2016 design as well.

Source wise: Ryzen 3900x, industrial RAM, SMPS psu (yes, really... eventually building a replacement), JCAT XE running parallel (LSIB MPAudio) lt3045s for power. Crappy crappy ATX case. Isoacoustic orea feet underneath. Sonore OpticalModule feeding network (also on MPAudio ALD 5x). HQPlayer directly. AudioLinux (which is barely tuned at this point).

Prior to the JCAT XE + Ryzen 3900x, running "server / endpoint" was ideal for HQPlayer Embedded. With latest advancements in hardware, that's no longer the case. Added bonus is HQPlayer is absolutely bulletproof for weeks at a time (no reliability issues). Using BubbleUpnp to control HQPlayer embbeded.

Previous: OpticalRendu, easily best "ARM endpoint" i'd used upto this point by a long long chalk.
 
Just a quick thanks to sq and mrdog for their efforts with this thread. Its inspired me to order one of the Soncoz dacs from Keith..... It arrives Friday (Ups willing) hope it lasts for a while and sounds ace!
Cheers boys.....
 
Darren said:
Just a quick thanks to sq and mrdog for their efforts with this thread. Its inspired me to order one of the Soncoz dacs from Keith..... It arrives Friday (Ups willing) hope it lasts for a while and sounds ace!
Cheers boys.....
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Snap. Mine arrives today.
Think we should start our own thread in a week or so.
 
I'd appreciate recent reviews on the Soncoz SGD1 please.

I have a Cyrus DACXP Signature which sounds fine in an all Cyrus Signature system with Spendor D7. Am wondering if newer DAC technology is offering anything more.
 
argustimewas said:
I'd appreciate recent reviews on the Soncoz SGD1 please.

I have a Cyrus DACXP Signature which sounds fine in an all Cyrus Signature system with Spendor D7. Am wondering if newer DAC technology is offering anything more.
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Your DAC XP can't take the QXR card? I have the Pre2X and out of interest was looking at the various DACS around at present vs the QXR.
 
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