YashN Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Coincidentally, there's a fantastic interview/article with Thorsten on the AudioStream site about the iFi products and the iDSD. Tons of great info there, including the different DSD and PCM pathways and the specific DSD implementation. As soon as it's asynch, it's based on Rankin's implementation, and that's all there is to know for an end-user. You added other names for it, but it's all the same thing. Knowing the details wouldn't help at all here. I for one wouldn't mind getting a cheap DAC just for the coax and a sub. I guess I could also use the RCA's for that too. Dedicated Line DSD/DXD | Audirvana+ | iFi iDSD Nano | SET Tube Amp | Totem Mites Surround: VLC | M-Audio FastTrack Pro | Mac Opt | Panasonic SA-HE100 | Logitech Z623 DIY: SET Tube Amp | Low-Noise Linear Regulated Power Supply | USB, Power, Speaker Cables | Speaker Stands | Acoustic Panels Link to comment
Paul R Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 First Impressions: This thing is pretty amazing. It is still burning in, but I could not resist taking a quick listen to it last night. At 16/44.1, it sounded a little muddled, and overemphasized the bass, compared to the Wavelength Proton. When using JRMC v19 to upsample everything to DSD, the sound and muddiness cleaned right up, and because precise and detailed. It was maybe a little bit thin. Upsampled to DSDx2 cleared up the sound even further, and produced a non-fatiguing and very pleasant sound. The sound also definitively got thinner and less satisfying. This could just be burning though, so I will let it play through the weekend. One install issue, installing under Windows I was unable to get any sound output at all. I believe this to be a driver issue. The install card specifically demands that one install the driver before hooking up the device, yet the drivers require the device to be plugged in before you can install them. The DAC worked 100% on MacOS though, no drama at all. I plan to put an iUSB power device and one of the iFi Gemini cables in the loop tonight, and see if that, and the burn in time, have improved the sound. -Paul Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat DAC. Robert A. Heinlein Link to comment
john57 Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 Interesting for me I find that RedBook very good at the native mode. I think that having the driver install running before you plug in the iDSD is to reduce the chance of Windows from installing a incomparable or left over older driver that did not get removed. That is the recommended way I see with many different drivers. In some cases you install the complete driver without connecting the device and then later connect the device. You run the install until it stops and wanted to see the iDSD and then continue. I find that the iDSD works better with files of different rates natively without doing any upsampling in my case. Link to comment
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