Article: The Value Proposition In Computer Audio: Nuts, Bolts, and Building Blocks - Building a Home for Your Player Software Part 2

[Jud]

1 hour ago, bluesman said:

I was unaware of both this fact and everything associated with it, so I apologize for starting an errant topic.  But I suspect that no one will fail to understand my motivation for that link once you see the comments in the thread following the review. 

 

There are so many divergent opinions about the same device and the same issue (USB vs SPDIF) that I have no idea whether either alternative in either case (Signature vs "unsigned" microRendu and USB vs SPDIF) is actually different from the other in any way at all.  And so it is with the Raspberry Pi 4 vs other audio devices in the same role.  Either it's your slice of Pi or it's not.

 

I really got a kick out of the comments in that thread.  Here's just a tiny sample of the wacky world of internet audio comedy:

 

• "with a good clock coax is typically better than USB because of less noise"
• "SPDIF is just generally inferior to USB. So if you are hearing a difference it is just with additional distortion from the inferior SPDIF interface which is a clockless mess of light."
• "Thats wrong on so many levels its almost scary, I hardly know where to begin"
• "There is no way it can improve the sound on an rme adi. Likely it is making the sound much worse but you prefer the distortion."
• And there's this absolutely priceless gem:  "Ditch your shit motherboard instead of wasting money on nonsense audio products."

 

You could not make this stuff up if you tried!

 

One can list advantages and disadvantages to both, and find many fans of one or the other. I personally like USB DACs because they work with my use case (sending DSD512 to the DAC) inexpensively. But if anyone else prefers SPDIF, happy listening to them.

 

Now that's solved, where do we want to go next? 🙂