Anyone using Thunderbolt 3 interface in their setup?

[cjf]

Hello,

 

Was curious to see if anyone is using Thunderbolt 3 with their music server configuration and if so what has been your experience with it compared to USB? I'm thinking of moving to this instead of USB and it appears many of the newer Pro Audio focused DAC's have this option available to use.

 

Does it work/behave the same with music server App's like ROON/JRiver as USB does? If you use it, have you noticed better/worse reliability and does a change in Sample Rate/Bit Rate occur seamlessly? Do you think it sounds better/worse? Do you use Windows/MAC and how have you found driver support to be?

 

Thanks

[cjf]

Thanks DonaldM for posting your experience with the Thunderbolt interface. If I am reading correctly you are or at least were using it as a means to connect your storage device to your MacMini. Did you by chance try it as a connection between your MM and your DAC either directly or via the use of an adapter to USB assuming such an adapter exists?

 

In my potential use case I would be going straight Thunderbolt3 to the DAC via its own Thunderbolt3 interface. One of my DAC's somewhat recently released a Thunderbolt3 card that can be installed into it VS the current USB card I use now (Lynx Hilo) and given some of the challenges I've had with USB drivers and such with Windows this Thunderbolt3 card has sparked my interest. I would probably use a Windows system at first but am considering switching to either an iMAC or MACMini as a phase 2 option.

 

Thanks again

[cjf]

On 4/10/2021 at 4:45 AM, Rexp said:

Did you end up using Thunderbolt, was it preferable to USB? Thanks! 

Hello,

 

It appears I forgot about this thread at some point.

 

I ended up going a different route instead switching DAC's for one that uses multi-channel Ethernet instead of Thunderbolt (Merging Hapi). In the end I'm very glad I waited until I could better stomach the cost to switch to Ethernet than I was willing to at the time of my original post.

 

Now with Ethernet my USB/Thunderbolt driver concerns are no longer a thing at all but in their place now I have to worry about Ethernet/ASIO drivers instead but they are far less problematic...so far 😀