Any users of the RME ADI-2 DAC?

[ferenc]

11 hours ago, exdmd said:

 

Here are a couple of posts where 8 critical listeners, six of whom are trained musicians who have been in the business for 30 years, one is a sound engineer, compare the RME ADI-2 DAC to the Yggdrasil:

 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-schiit-yggdrasil-v2-dac.3607/page-41#post-147945

 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-schiit-yggdrasil-v2-dac.3607/page-42#post-148467

 

TL;DR the Yggdrasil sounds significantly better than the RME ADI-2 DAC to professional musicians.

 

 

According to my almost 2 year long experience with ADI-2 Pro and ADI-2 DAC, I found only two DACs of the dozens I could try which were more airy and beefy at he same time in my systems: the Merging Hapi with linear PSU and Premiere D/A board and now the Holo Spring 2 KTE. All the iFis, Schitts, Naim, Chords were not up to my taste so much. Using Roon / Hqplayer for upconversion. on my iMac Pro and MacBook Pro and even with SMS200 and Ultra (the MergingHalo  is not compatible with SMS yet).

 

Anybody to mention the naturalness of an instrument is failing in my eye, if does not use his/her own recording and was not at the recording him/herself it just does not mean anything honestly.

 

This is why I used to organize studio visits for hifi buddies. I got the idea to organize a 2-3 day long recording session for not more than 10-15 people where they can do their own recording or can assist the whole rehearsing, recording, mixing, mastering session and can get all the different recordings from all the different phases, including a stereo 2 mic rec and if one wants a stereo tape as well.  There will be a price to pay, but the cost of the artists, studio and the sound guys could be shared between the attending people, so it can be something like 180-200 Euro for the 2-3 days at the studio including some food and refreshments for each people. Plus the travel cost to Budapest  .

 

[exdmd]

4 hours ago, ferenc said:

 

 

According to my almost 2 year long experience with ADI-2 Pro and ADI-2 DAC, I found only two DACs of the dozens I could try which were more airy and beefy at he same time in my systems: the Merging Hapi with linear PSU and Premiere D/A board and now the Holo Spring 2 KTE. All the iFis, Schitts, Naim, Chords were not up to my taste so much. Using Roon / Hqplayer for upconversion. on my iMac Pro and MacBook Pro and even with SMS200 and Ultra (the MergingHalo  is not compatible with SMS yet).

 

Anybody to mention the naturalness of an instrument is failing in my eye, if does not use his/her own recording and was not at the recording him/herself it just does not mean anything honestly.

 

This is why I used to organize studio visits for hifi buddies. I got the idea to organize a 2-3 day long recording session for not more than 10-15 people where they can do their own recording or can assist the whole rehearsing, recording, mixing, mastering session and can get all the different recordings from all the different phases, including a stereo 2 mic rec and if one wants a stereo tape as well.  There will be a price to pay, but the cost of the artists, studio and the sound guys could be shared between the attending people, so it can be something like 180-200 Euro for the 2-3 days at the studio including some food and refreshments for each people. Plus the travel cost to Budapest  .

 

 

What are your opinions of the Yggdrasil Analog 2 or the Dangerous Music Convert-2 DAC? I spend most of my time at SBAF and the RME ADI-2 DAC and Pro are well regarded there but considered to be on the level of the Gungnir Multibit, not the Yggdrasil. I find it curious that a DAC as good as the Dangerous Music Convert-2 has not one review here at this forum. Consensus at SBAF presently is the top two DACs are Yggdrasil A2 and the Dangerous Music Convert-2.

[ferenc]

1 hour ago, exdmd said:

 

What are your opinions of the Yggdrasil Analog 2 or the Dangerous Music Convert-2 DAC? I spend most of my time at SBAF and the RME ADI-2 DAC and Pro are well regarded there but considered to be on the level of the Gungnir Multibit, not the Yggdrasil. I find it curious that a DAC as good as the Dangerous Music Convert-2 has not one review here at this forum. Consensus at SBAF presently is the top two DACs are Yggdrasil A2 and the Dangerous Music Convert-2.

 

I did not have a chance to use the Yggy in my system, but when I tried it in a familiar (but not my) system I found it not so special. The Dangerous is a very nice converter really, but my taste is probably not the same as at SBAF.  I do not look for "detail" as such for example fluidity, coherence, air is more important for me and my desktop system is a bit different as well as theirs there. It is a really simple nearfield one.  

 

 

 

 

[Miska]

I have some RME, Schiit and Holo on my office desk too!

 

 

Schiit is being headphone amp, RME connected to it over balanced because the RME headphone output is not available in DSD Direct mode. Holo Spring 1 connected over unbalanced. Jotunheim also has the balance AK4490 DAC module for YouTube sounds, and the analog output is connected back to ADI-2 Pro analog input for testing 768/32 PCM and DSD256 analog inputs (plus the visible spare coax S/PDIF for testing digital inputs).

 

Next plan is to replace Schiit Jotunheim with Benchmark HPA4.

 

[asdf1000]

1 minute ago, Miska said:

Next plan is to replace Schiit Jotunheim with Benchmark HPA4.

 

Yikes. Skipping the THX 789 and going straight for the Big Daddy 😁

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Yikes. Skipping the THX 789 and going straight for the Big Daddy 😁

 

That would be perfectly fine if it wouldn't be so freaking hard to get! Especially from Finnish perspective!

 

So I probably need to settle on the much more expensive but much more available option.

[bibo01]

11 hours ago, ferenc said:

 

 

According to my almost 2 year long experience with ADI-2 Pro and ADI-2 DAC, I found only two DACs of the dozens I could try which were more airy and beefy at he same time in my systems: the Merging Hapi with linear PSU and Premiere D/A board and now the Holo Spring 2 KTE. All the iFis, Schitts, Naim, Chords were not up to my taste so much. Using Roon / Hqplayer for upconversion. on my iMac Pro and MacBook Pro and even with SMS200 and Ultra (the MergingHalo  is not compatible with SMS yet).

 

Anybody to mention the naturalness of an instrument is failing in my eye, if does not use his/her own recording and was not at the recording him/herself it just does not mean anything honestly.

 

This is why I used to organize studio visits for hifi buddies. I got the idea to organize a 2-3 day long recording session for not more than 10-15 people where they can do their own recording or can assist the whole rehearsing, recording, mixing, mastering session and can get all the different recordings from all the different phases, including a stereo 2 mic rec and if one wants a stereo tape as well.  There will be a price to pay, but the cost of the artists, studio and the sound guys could be shared between the attending people, so it can be something like 180-200 Euro for the 2-3 days at the studio including some food and refreshments for each people. Plus the travel cost to Budapest  .

 

What linear PSU did you use for the Hapi?

[ferenc]

9 hours ago, bibo01 said:

What linear PSU did you use for the Hapi?

 

A locally made one, called Hydra Sound, it is 12V, 3A so could be used for the RME as well, after changing the plug. It is almost as good as the one what Kenneth Lau made for another Hapi, and I could try and compare them. Soon I will have another one to try as well, which will provide 9V and 12V at the same time powering the SMS200 Neo and DAC at the same time. Just for fun, I really do not need it.  I am happy with the Holo Spring 2 KTE for quite a while it seems. 

 

[asdf1000]

On 2/7/2019 at 6:00 PM, chetthejet said:

Clarity, clarity and clarity.  Realism of instruments/voices, better separation of elements in complex music (choral/orchestral works, for example Mahler 2,3,8).  Just an all around cleaner sound.

 

Hi, thanks again. Do you feed it DSD via software upsampling? Or PCM upsampling?

 

Or just bit perfect playback to the DAC?

[chetthejet]

2 hours ago, Em2016 said:

 

Hi, thanks again. Do you feed it DSD via software upsampling? Or PCM upsampling?

 

Or just bit perfect playback to the DAC?

No DSD or upsampling.  Just flac to PCM via Squeezelite, and straight into the DAC via USB.

[bibo01]

21 hours ago, ferenc said:

It is almost as good as the one what Kenneth Lau made for another Hapi, and I could try and compare them.

That would be good, report please. Thanks

[ferenc]

1 hour ago, bibo01 said:

That would be good, report please. Thanks

 

I am not sure, if practically all my psus are locally made, commercially not really available. 

The RME factory PSU is not bad at all. If you do not like it for some reason, there is a good chance that the new  lpsu will not help.

[asdf1000]

On 2/8/2019 at 7:28 PM, Miska said:

And upsampled to DSD256 (in DSD Direct mode), even lower level and now just totally uncorrelated noise instead of PCM's directly correlated images:

 

Does the big hump which appears with DSD256 in DSD Direct Mode (and is not there for PCM705 input) affect performance in any way?

 

Or is the big hump harmless, compared with the 1st image at PCM705k for PCM705k input?

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Em2016 said:

Does the big hump which appears with DSD256 in DSD Direct Mode (and is not there for PCM705 input) affect performance in any way?

 

Or is the big hump harmless, compared with the 1st image at PCM705k for PCM705k input?

 

It is left-over of DSD noise shaping noise. It is of lowest level of these, and it is uncorrelated with the signal (random), so if it causes any intermodulation products, you'd hear it as a noise on audio band (just like tape hiss or FM/AM radio background). The images are fully correlated with the signal, so intermodulation products would be also correlated and sound like distortion (that would likely sound like messyness and hardness in the sound).

 

But either of those is massively better than with 44.1k input with images around 352.8 kHz. While even then, overall, this is extremely well performing DAC. So it is more about making already good even better.

 

[Sunya]

On 2/8/2019 at 10:28 AM, Miska said:

At 44.1k input you can see images around multiples of 352.8k on-chip digital filter output rate:

 

Is this with the Sharp, Slow or NOS/Super Slow filter?

[Miska]

7 hours ago, Sunya said:

Is this with the Sharp, Slow or NOS/Super Slow filter?

 

This is with Sharp. Since SD Sharp (slow-delay) is minimum-phase version, it gives same frequency response. Same between "slow" and "sd slow".

 

Here's Slow:

 

And NOS:

 

These are with 44.1k input too.

[Sunya]

It's not clear to me if you're talking about the output of the AK4490 DAC chip or about the RME DAC as a whole; so you're saying that the RME's analog reconstruction filter doesn't remove these images?

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Sunya said:

It's not clear to me if you're talking about the output of the AK4490 DAC chip or about the RME DAC as a whole; so you're saying that the RME's analog reconstruction filter doesn't remove these images?

 

These are measured from analog outputs of the entire DAC, not just the chip, the chip output would have notably more.

 

So far, I have not seen a DAC that would have so much analog filter that it would remove these images completely. Otherwise they will begin to suffer from phase response errors already in audio band. For that, and hires support reasons they need to have -3 dB point around 100 kHz. 8x digital oversampling filter is just doesn't move images high enough. As I have shown earlier, running the digital filters externally and the DAC with 705.6/768 input already reduces images significantly because it is twice higher rate than the on-chip digital filters manage to do.

 

Holo Spring 2 when running R2R PCM section at 1.4 MHz rate has enough filter to remove images that would be starting at that frequency.

 

That's one reason why I use 256x digital oversampling filters and DSD output with ADI-2... No images at all...

 

[Miska]

IOW, if we look just at numbers. From 100 to 352.8 kHz is about one and half octaves. You would need about 100 dB/oct analog reconstruction filter for perfect reconstruction... That is 17th order filter.

[deneb]

I've been using RME Adi2pro AE for about one year now. This is a reference DAC. State of the art. Not saying it's necessarily the best, just that it can compete with anything out there. Of course personal taste is crucial. Lots of features and no MQA (no MQA is a must for me): truly a Swiss army knife. The ADC is also superb. I'm routinely listening to LPs via jriver, taking advantage of room correction and some vst plugins.

[Ralf11]

ok, who thinks it is too clinical sounding and wants to gift it to me?

[michaelvv]

Hi.

 

Does the RME ADI-2 fs ( not the pro ) support PCM768 and DSD256 native ( not dop ) under hqplayer ???

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, michaelvv said:

Does the RME ADI-2 fs ( not the pro ) support PCM768 and DSD256 native ( not dop ) under hqplayer ???

 

Yes, it should work the same as Pro. But ADI-2 is always DoP.

 

[michaelvv]

3 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, it should work the same as Pro. But ADI-2 is always DoP.

 

Hi Jussi.

 

The only reason I asked regarding "Native DSD" is that my Chord 2Qute is quite unstable when using Dop , lots of hiccups , which

I don't would like to experience If I bought the RME ADI-2,

You have no issues with it under you hqplayer embedded I guess ???

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, michaelvv said:

The only reason I asked regarding "Native DSD" is that my Chord 2Qute is quite unstable when using Dop , lots of hiccups , which

I don't would like to experience If I bought the RME ADI-2,

You have no issues with it under you hqplayer embedded I guess ???

 

No, I've never had a single issue with the ADI-2. Has been one of the most stable devices for me.