Audiophile Reference Music Servers

Romy - Your comments are certainly welcome on this site, but calling someone a fool is not welcome no matter who the comment is directed towards. This site is laid back and for the enjoyment of this wonderful hobby. When readers use personal attacks such as what you just posted it really takes the enjoyment out of everything. I am all for constructive criticism of myself and anyone around here. Your comment offered nothing to suggest it was constructive.<br />

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Can you please elaborate on your reasoning why I sound like a fool and why you titled your post "just another foolish forum?" I made a simple mistake and misspoke about the volume control in this DAC. I have no vested interest in convincing anyone to like this DAC. I believe in the product and I am interested in expressing my opinion about it.<br />

Chris, I care less about your mistake; it was not what commented upon. I do not do any personal attacks come on! As much as you were expressing your opinion about the DAC I expressed mine in regard to the lever at wish you expressed yours. I was dissatisfied by lightweightnes, superficiality, and almost cheapness of your comments. You might consider a career of some kind of industry reviewer – it looks like you are developing the necessary inclinations for discounted cheerleading. I see no need to continue this dialog; I have made my conclusion about your commentaries regarding this matter…<br />

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The Cat

Romy - Sorry you feel this way and you are dissatisfied with my comments. After discussing the issue with Berkeley Audio Design I felt it pointless to to go into the product any further because unless you designed the product and spent millions of dollars in R&D on the product you really can't understand it all. I am not even close to understanding it all. When I discussed this issue there were countless other items that play into every design choice a manufacturer has to make. I highly suggest calling Berkeley Audio Design and discussing it with them if you want additional details. Or, feel free to call me anytime and I'd be willing to discuss this or any other matters.<br />

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I think the readers should also understand that you do have a motive here to drive readers to your own audio site and you have been known to attempt to discredit many people who you don't agree with. It is also a fact that you have been asked to leave or have been banned from other audio websites for this type of behavior.

"This site is laid back and for the enjoyment of this wonderful hobby" <br />

Now that iTunes 8 is out, can you tell us your dirty little secrets Chris?

Sorry, it's going to be a little while before I can speak up about the cool things to come for audiophiles.

So I take it that means they aren't a part of the current (new) release then... otherwise they aren't quite the exciting features I was holding out for I'm sure we'll get the info soon enough...

Hey Poo - There was a chance one little piece was going to make it into iTunes 8.0, but the other stuff I am referring to is not coming from Apple, rather it integrates with .... :-|

Chris.... The stock cable has too many AES lines as you are aware, but I like the BNC word clock line. Could you do me a stereo cable for the lynx AES16e also with bnc word clock? I'm interested in using this set up with an empirical pacecar...<br />

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AB

Hi AB - Nice configuration and I surely see the need for a cable with the specs you suggest. But, A cable with the word clock line would have to come much later than the HD26 to XLR cable, if at all. This one is not up to me, I just have contacts who will possibly bring this to market :-(<br />

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I was thinking about the Lynx / Pace Car solution the other day and thought of some questions as to how it would work with the Lynx card and if it really adds value. If the Pace Car does improve performance then I am all for it and may have to pick one up, so don't worry about any bias here. Steve N. is a good guy and I like his work. My thoughts about this combination are this: The Pace Car is a re-clocker, not necessarily an external clock. If this word clock cable is connected from the Lynx to the Pace Car can one switch the Lynx clock settings from "Internal" to the Pace Car, or is it only a re-clocking device? You may not know, but I am curious. I have no idea about the actual performance either way but am interested in it as well.<br />

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Since the Lynx card puts out about 20 ps of jitter, I wonder if the Pace Car can lower this or eliminate other possible sources of sound degradation. I love the performance of the Lynx card as it is, but I'm always looking for improvements to use and share with everyone.

Chris, the configuration I've come up with is: <br />

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Lynx AES16e<-> 24/192 Pacecar (connected via AES/XLR)<-> DAC.<br />

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I'm not sure what the difference is between a reclocker vs external clock. I'm not too technical on all this. I thought the pacecar WAS an external clock. In any case I ran the above configuration passed Steve N, and he said it would work. Apparently prev customers of his have clocked older 24/96 Lynx cards via word clock without problems, but I'm not sure with what software settings etc. This stuff is pretty "out there"!<br />

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I know Steve can use different clocks (with increasing accuracy) in his pacecars, but I dont know if the top one would better 20ps jitter. I do know the pacecar will do 24/192 no problems if you request this config.<br />

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Since you obviously know considerably more technical stuff than me, I'm wondering if you could put the above questions straight to empirical. I started a topic on "paceing a MacPro" on Empiricals blog a month or so back....I'd obviously love to really sort out how/what is exactly done, before committing too much money!<br />

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At the moment I have a pacecar that drives a Sonos at 16/44.1 and this is very effective.<br />

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AB

Hey AB - Give me a couple minutes, let me see what I can do.

There are already EA customers using the Lynx card with the Pace-Car reclocker using the word-clock input on the Lynx. The Pace-Car drives the word-clock to the Lynx in order to synchronize the data to the internal clock of the Pace-Car. The clock that matters is then the one inside the Pace-Car, not the one on the Lynx card. I would recommend the Superclock4 for best results in the Pace-Car, although some are using the Ultraclock.<br />

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If the Pace-Car did not improve on the jitter from the Lynx, these customers would not be using it this way. I'll try to get one of these customers to post their comments here.<br />

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BTW, I seriously doubt that the jitter from the lynx S/PDIF output is 20psec. Maybe the oscillator in there is rated at this, but even that is unlikely.<br />

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Steve N.<br />

Empirical Audio

Steve. Chris. Thanks for timely response! <br />

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Chris: of course another practical advantage I see of this set up (in addition to jitter reduction) is that the pacecar/lynx hook up allows input into a DAC which doesn't have the option of AES input. ie this opens up a whole broader choice of DAC's. It also allows the use of the direct I2S input (if your DAC has one of those).<br />

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Steve: I look forward to the comments of other users...<br />

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Question for both of you (if you can!) Concerning the lynx upsampling. Once this card is installed, what software engine/code upsamples lower def tracks eg say 16/44.1 to the 24/192 capabilities of the lynx card? Is it still mac's midi (which appears to be excellent) or is it Lynx's? Any comparisons between the two????<br />

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Thanks again. It's great to be involved with such cutting edge blokes like you guys...

I’m not sure that I buy the argument that “if the Pace-Car did not improve on the jitter from the Lynx, these customers would not be using it this way”. I would hope that these customers use this configuration because it sounds better and that they have a significant investment in the Pace-Car configuration. I don’t believe that most of these customers have the means to measure jitter, but more important lowest jitter does not guarantee best quality sound anymore than highest resolution bit and sampling rate guarantees better sound. But the above notwithstanding, how do you measure jitter? The Monarchy Audio website has a review article titled “Jitter Bugging” that states an increasing number of ‘black boxes’ promise improved sound from your CD player – but do they work? The results for the Monarchy unit show the following:<br />

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Origin-------------Description----------------Peak-to-peak Jitter <br />

--------------------------------------------------Coaxial-----Optical<br />

PSU Switching---100Hz----------------------210ps-------254ps<br />

Data---------------Fundamental-------------557ps-------486ps<br />

Data---------------3rd Harmonic-------------225ps-------170ps<br />

Data---------------5th Harmonic-------------145ps-------109ps<br />

Data---------------7th – 11th Harmonic----192ps----- 1441ps<br />

Data---------------Weighted Total-----------685ps------602ps<br />

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Does this table represent the correct way to show jitter measurements and which of these values holds the most significance?<br />

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The Monarchy measurements are useful because they show magnitude and frequency, however there is another dimension to this measurement and that is changing frequency of jitter. If the frequency of the jitter is modulating, then this may be more audible and offensive to human ears.<br />

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Also, this measurement says nothing about technique. The measurement can be taken over a lot of samples randomly, synchronously and even synchonous with the music stream. The measurement says nothing about this relationship. It is these types of things that the brain is really good at detecting. Patterns that are interrelated.<br />

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Furthermore, there are only two reasons why the Pace-Car could improve on the Lynx: One is jitter and the other is ground-loop isolation. It does not change the data.<br />

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Steve N.<br />

Empirical Audio

I'm using a lynx card and pace-car. The pace-car definitely improves the sound quality, quite a lot actually.<br />

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I wonder whether the re-clocker badge is a slight misnomer. It buffers the data stream and it has a high quality internal clock for the output. The input to the buffer has to run at the same rate as the output otherwise you get breaks in the stream with an under or over run. So the pace-car has a word clock output and the digital source is sync'd to this. Now i'd say that just sync'ing the lynx card to an external clock is 're-clocking' it. The forums are full of talk about the effects of an external clock on a digital source. There's a difference but on it's own it's not that major a difference to my ears. When you then run the digital stream into the pace-car though it's being temporarily held and then output again after being buffered. It's trying to do in real time what happens when you record music to your hard drive and store it as a file - treat it as just data and strip the timing (jitter) element from it before sending it out again. You only have the data and the way it's clocked as variables which can affect sound quality with digital streams and the pace-car doesnt alter the bits.<br />

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Actually the clock rate at the input and the output sides of the pace-car's fifo buffer are exactly the same which is why i think the reclocker name is maybe not quite right. The pace-car has to fix the source clock rate so as not to under or over run the buffer but i think it's a buffer foremost. That's what's doing the jitter reduction and that seems to be where Steve has put most of his effort in optimising the circuit design, power supplies etc.<br />

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As with everything you probably have to try it and see. I would be surprised if you didnt hear a noticeable improvement in SQ.

Hi drrd - Welcome to Computer Audiophile. Thank you very much for the post!

Thanks for very informative post. Which Lynx card are you using drrd, and what cable? Is the lynx software set up difficult to do to make this happen. Are the settings stable? That is do you have to frig around or is it set and forget?<br />

Do you get any stop/starts in tracks playing. I don't with my pacecar/sonos, but this is buffering at only 16/44.1. I'd love to know if this is an issue at 24bit 96 and above...<br />

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I'd be really interested to know these things as I feel practical issues need to be sorted otherwise any improvement in sound become a non event IMHO. I'm thinking of getting a 24/192 AESe Lynx card....<br />

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Thanks again<br />

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AB

I used to own an AES16 and Lynx 2 but sold them both in the end. At the money I just wasn't happy with the SQ of their digital outputs. I needed something to feed the pace-car and I picked up a Lynx One on ebay for like £4. I think the digital out on it sounds at least as good as the other Lynx cards.<br />

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Set up is easy, you're just sync'ing the card to an external clock instead of using the on-board clock. It's a drop down box and click affair in the Lynx software, nothing more. Never had any stability issues with Lynx, the settings stick and are there when you launch windows, so yes it's set and forget. <br />

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I guess there is potential for higher rates to have less buffer time but you'd hope Steve would have tested that out. I'm also running at 44.1 so couldn't comment.<br />

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I'm interested in trying out a Weiss AFI1. I think that and the pace-car will sound better than the Lynx-pace-car combination. The Lynx-pace-car combo sounds better than the other option I tried which was with my m-audio firewire box sync'd via spdif and feeding the pace-car. For that i just used an ADC that I have to sync to WC and then output sync'd spdif, the m-audio box sync's to that. It's possible the Weiss unit may sound better on it's own than with the pace-car, you never know.<br />

Steve does say that source quality makes no difference to the pace-car but I would have to disagree there. It improves things a lot though.

Thanks for the details and your opinion on this drrd.

The one problem I feel with the review (especially in your comments comparing the Berkeley to Weiss Minerva)...is the Weiss is a "real" computer DAC with Firewire connections. The Berkeley is a stereo DAC. To me it is a bit of apples and oranges (only a bit).<br />

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There is no doubt the Berkeley may be better than the Weiss, however since it is just a DAC that you are connecting via AES/EBU connection....there are many other DAC's that may outperform the Berkeley and have AES/EBU connections (Burmester, MBL, Acoustic Arts and EMM Labs to name a few).<br />

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I was with you when you said the Weiss was best (I have never heard it, just that I see you are testing lots of "computer" DACS), but now when you include the Berkeley, this opens up a complete new game.<br />

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I have nothing to do with any of the products mentioned....Only thinking out loud.....<br />

Mike<br />

Audio Archon<br />

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Hi Mike - Welcome to Computer Audiophile. Your point is very valid and is something I've thought about as well. I don't really agree with your categorization of "real" computer DACs. Many computers come with Toslink and coax outputs in addition to USB and FireWire. The computer is just a different trasnport that can connect many different ways. I think a DAC is a DAC. Plus the Lynx card is 100% a computer product that can only connect via AES. <br />

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As of now the Alpha DAC is my favorite. I am certainly not ruling out any products including those you've mentioned. <br />

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Anyway, thanks for sharing your opinion. I look toward to your honest views around here.

Great site Chris.<br />

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I almost given pc up as a transport but after reading this review I changed my mind.<br />

Intentially I wanted to buy an(other) Imac.<br />

But tonight I'm going to buy a secondhand G5 and the Lynx aes16 which will come in a few days.<br />

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I hope that this as transport will be much better than my Imac M-audio transit usb combo.<br />

Now I can't compare this combo with my Van Medevoort (dutch brand) cd 350 as a transport.<br />

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I will keep you posted about my experiences.<br />

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Ps rest of the equipment is M-audio super dac 2496 (heavily mod by soundevolution) -Dion Audio T92 (tube pre-amp) - Dion Audio SD60 (class d power amp) - Sonus Faber Grand Piano Home-<br />

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Hi ivo1986 - Welcome to Computer Audiophile. You'll be glad you didn't give up on computer based audio. The best manufacturers and most respected people in the high-end industry are using computer based solutions.<br />

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Make sure to let us know how it goes!