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

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1 hour ago, bluesman said:

A quote of note in the linked thread comes from ASR's leader Amir:  "if you have a high-quality DAC, there is no reason to anguish over how you are driving it."  I have no idea what he really means by that,

 

Unfortunately only partially quoting and dropping it here means that all context is lost.

 

Here's the full quote:

As we see here, there is no difference at all how you drive the S/PDIF input on the Exasound E32. It excellently cleans up whatever ills may be on S/PDIF and renders the same excellent output. So if you have a high-quality DAC, there is no reason to anguish over how you are driving it.

 

So Amir is using the Exasound 32 as an engineering example of what you get when designers take care to sanitize their inputs from typical upstream issues. Also Benchmark did this with one of their DAC's and I believe a 100 foot cable that was just ludicrously out of spec, also former member Mansr midwifed a USB setup that was out of spec but showed 100% reconstruction by the DAC regardless.

 

Great article BTW. And there is now an 8GB of RAM Pi but we have to wait for a 64bit OS for it.

 

 

 

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9 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Thankfully we were rescued by one of Amir's disciples. 

 

The context there added nothing and in fact was nothing but a side note because it involved a subset of his all encompassing statement, "So if you have a high-quality DAC, there is no reason to anguish over how you are driving it."

 

If you would only grab the rope Chris.

 

Also figured out why your author couldn't get the hotlink to work

 

https://www.roonlabs.com works as hotlink

 

https://www.audio “science” review does work.   Well at least until it doesn't 😉 

 

www.audio “science” review doesn't work,

 

So the automation here is messing with the hot link to a specific domain.

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22 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Thankfully we were rescued by one of Amir's disciples.

 

Also let me know if the name calling only goes one way between you and me. AKA what kind of problem do we personally have?

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4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Not a name, just a description of your behavior. 

 

Bluesman had a question about a quote. Both Firedog and I answered along the same lines. Failing to see the mountain made out of a molehill.

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Better this moves over and you PM me if you feel that strongly as to reduce the amount of injected noise.

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3 hours ago, bluesman said:

USB is not a SQ barrier if you power the DAC separately and don’t come close to the limit of available USB power with other peripherals (eg use external power if you must use a USB HDD or SSD).

 

Interesting enough in that vein that Amir benched, I kid you not, the Donald DAC. It has both native USB C data/power and separate USB C power only and there's a demonstrable difference.