T+A new flagship streaming dsd1024 dac

[Miska]

14 minutes ago, louisxiawei said:

https://www.ta-hifi.de/en/audiosystems/hv-series/

 

 I believe it is a very HQplayer friendly DAC @Miska.

 

Yes, certainly I'd expect it to work very nicely!

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, mav52 said:

Does HQP support DSD 1024 and what kind of computing power will the end user need to use it, DSD 512 took a whole new system for me

 

Yes, it's been supported for a while already, but only recently devices have appeared that also support it. This device is "a little bit outside of my budget", but I've been testing DSD1024 on Holo Spring 2 DAC.

 

It takes about twice as much power as DSD512. With -2s filters and/or with help of recent GPUs it is not too hard to reach though. I've done most of my testing and measurements with poly-sinc-ext2.

 

[Miska]

13 hours ago, louisxiawei said:

I'm just curious: which DACs support dsd 512 over Ethernet? I'm only aware of merging and playback desgin are doing dsd over Ethernet, but limit is dsd 256.

 

Merging for example does 8 channels of DSD256 over ethernet, that is 86 Mbps. Stereo DSD1024 is the same 86 Mbps...

 

[Miska]

39 minutes ago, barrows said:

one need not get involved with things like HQPlayer to take advantage of this approach anymore

 

I don't think it is all that complicated...

 

But since you are about what I call a "software defined DAC", what matters a lot is quality of oversampling and modulator algorithms.

 

So it is not about just "anything that happens to output DSD256". Because then you could as well stick to the on-chip filters and modulators in regular COTS DAC chips.

 

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, barrows said:

Heck, look at the current state of the mainstream audio reviewers out there, even those so called "professionals" are pretty far behind the curve when it comes to these kinds of approaches, and when they test DACs like Holo Audio or T+A they do not even bother to test with oversampling in software!

 

Certainly, although many demos at shows, I think Stereo was maybe the first one to feature such in their print review of the T+A flagship.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

Now if you want to use an Ethernet input, there’s the cost of that interface and support.... Considering the opticalRendu is ?$1200 or so, what would the price of a DAC be?

 

At least the T+A flagship has DSD1024 NAA capable ethernet interface. But I'm especially curious about the new HA 200 headphone amp version that is not nearly as expensive.

 

[Miska]

33 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

£6600, €6600, $8900

 

If it is the best solution for HQP with headphones (with measurements at least matching any separate DAC and amp combo) I'm interested too.

 

If you compare to something like Spring2 + HPA4 or May + HPA4, things are looking interesting.

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, pvanosta said:

Has anyone tested (or owned) the T+A SD-3100HV or SDV-3100HV by any chance? Earlier in this thread, there were some questions around Ethernet connection and the ability to play DSD files over ethernet and which Dacs were capable of doing this.

 

The last time I emailed T+A directly (approx 6 months ago), they clearly stated that DSD was only supported via USB and not via ethernet. Some of the posts in this thread seem to indicate the opposite, unless I am misreading...

 

AFAIK, up to DSD1024 over HQPlayer NAA to it should work. This is how it was demoed at Munich 2019 and discussed on the Stereo magazine. I just don't have such unit myself to test with - quite a bit outside of my budget!

 

[Miska]

9 hours ago, pvanosta said:

Coming back to DSD support via ethernet: I just read the review of the MP 3100 HV in Stereophile, which seems to confirm my earlier info I got from T+A themselves. The higher resolution DSD/DSF files (DSD128, DSD256 and higher) are not supported via ethernet. Only via USB. So my understanding is then: if I run Roon from NUC to MP3100HV via ethernet, Roon will down-rez the DSD128 and up. If I run Roon from my NUC via USB to the MP3100HV, the resolution is supported. Is the SD 3100 different from th MP 3100?

 

AFAIK, SD3100HV/SDV3100HV works up to DSD1024 over Ethernet in HQPlayer NAA case. Maybe MP3100HV has different hardware inside.

 

[Miska]

4 hours ago, barrows said:

I do not know what T+A is using here, but the sample rate limitations suggest it is likely one of the simple, cheap, third party interfaces available

 

Depending on device model, it has NAA support that at least used to work up to DSD1024.

 

Quote

While it is true that early implementations of USB audio (and some DACs still have not got it right yet, but they are fewer and fewer every day)) were flawed, that is not the case anymore and most well designed DACs today have excellent USB inputs, which are often the best performing input for the DAC.

 

USB Audio Class just has it's limitations. For example you cannot make a device like exaSound 8-channel DACs or NADAC/Hapi/Horus with USB Audio Class...

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, barrows said:

Are you aware of other commercial DACs offering NAA support?

 

exaSound PlayPoint DM is another one, rest of the devices I can remember are streamers with digital outputs.

 

[Miska]

24 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

I knew someone would argue this:) This really appears to be a computer mother board inside a DAC. You could load Windows, connect a display, connect a keyboard, etc and play Solitaire on it. I'm not saying you would or that it's a bad thing.

 

What is a computer mother board inside a DAC? Where you can run Windows? Certainly not the T+A in question here.

 

1 hour ago, vortecjr said:

I would categorize this as a computer and a DAC in the same enclosure.

 

How is it different from a Rendu and a DAC in the same enclosure?

 

1 hour ago, vortecjr said:

Jussi, can you expand on this. NADAC/Hapi/Horus side which are based on a specific network protocol what would be the issue with making a multichannel USB DAC with USB Audio Class?   

 

USB Audio Class has specification based limitations that makes it impossible.

 

24 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

BTW I had a Merging unit here (forget what it was) that was a Roon server and it also had a standard mother board inside it. I'm not certain where Merging uses the ZMAN card. 

 

AFAIK, MERGING+Player has Roon inside, NADAC doesn't and it is more like ZMAN + DAC.

 

I've been using a Merging Hapi for a while now, verifying all functionality with all HQPlayer versions, and HQPlayer OS has special support for it. You won't find ordinary computer in there.

 

[Miska]

Here is example of HQPlayer Embedded server. The whole computer fits under that heatsink. Everything else is just a development carrier board for it used for testing purposes. It can do up to DSD256 with ASDM7 modulator. It can also take USB inputs. I wouldn't call it a regular computer, although it runs HQPlayer OS....

 

[Miska]

4 hours ago, jabbr said:

Sure, just saying that there is a broad spectrum of implementations. The concept of SoC incorporating IO and processing has become ubiquitous e.g. https://www.mellanox.com/products/bluefield2-overview so that would be extraordinary overkill but literally NAA could run on the NIC -- no one would ever do that would they ... hmm ...  

 

By the way, you have probably noticed that Nvidia purchased Mellanox. It is all about massive computations in data centers. See starting 7:45 in this GTC 2020 keynote: