Audirvana Studio

[Dandou]

The USB input is noisy in Chord DACs. Toslink and Coaxial inputs are better indeed.

Did you ever try the BNC inputs with SRC-DX? 

[Dandou]

Yes, and it converts the bit-depth of the tracks to the native bit-depth of the DAC. 

[Dandou]

12 minutes ago, jos said:

No, and I don’t now anything about SRC-DX too

It's a device that is produced by a Canadian maker, and it allows capturing the USB output of a streamer (or a computer), and to input it to Chord DACs through their double BNC entry.

There are Chord users that say that they get the best sound with the double BNC entry. One of them is a friend of mine who uses SRC-DX with a Qutest. 

[Dandou]

20 minutes ago, jos said:

I don’t now anything about SRC-DX

SRC-DX allows also to connect between the streamer and the DAC another device that is called "Opto-DX". This device converts the electrical stream of the sound to optical. In this way, it removes all the noise that is produced by the server, the LAN, and even the streamer. A second converter converts the optical stream to an electrical stream that is input to the Chord DAC through its double BNC connectors.

Opto-DX improves greatly the sound quality, and is made for Chord DACs. They can take advantage of it, because they have a double BNC entry. 

 

Sorry for the off-topic. 

[Dandou]

10 minutes ago, Jud said:

“Convert” is perhaps less accurate than “zero padding”

You are right, and I don't use always the most accurate words in English. But I did not mean in any way that this "zero padling" does not keep the sound bit-perfect. 

[Dandou]

15 minutes ago, jos said:

Is there any experience out there…what to do best?

For upsampling, you'll get an excellent result only with HQPlayer. 

[Dandou]

58 minutes ago, jos said:

On the web they say in general: ‘don’t upsample to a Chord DAC’, because Chord DAC’s can do that better.

This is untrue. 

 

As upsampling is a necessary step for Delta-Sigma DACs in the chain of the conversion from digital to analog, the sound has to be brought to high frequencies of DSD before its conversion to analog. DSD512 in the case of your Qutest. The problem is that high quality upsampling to this rate requires a lot of computing power, and the tiny chip of the DAC is far for being powerful enough. So it operates a low quality upsampling. To upsample to the highest quality level, a powerful computer is necessary. 

This is true for all Delta-Sigma DACs. If Chord DACs were an exception, Chord would not sell for them the M Scaler: a very expensive device that has for only purpose the upsampling of the sound before its input to Chord DACs (through their double BLC entry). 

[Dandou]

13 minutes ago, pl_svn said:

internally to 1.5MHz

They upsample to 768 KHz, and then convert to DSD512. 

M Scaler does the PCM upsampling better for sure, but it costs (with its cables) about 3-4 times the price of the Qutest. 

Still, there are Chord users who prefer to upsample with HQPlayer. 

[Dandou]

30 minutes ago, pl_svn said:

are you sure about also converting to DSD?

Yes, DSD is the format in which all Delta-Sigma DACs work. They need to bring the digital sound to this format, before operating the conversion to analog asound. 

For this reason, Delta-Sigma DACs sound better if you play DSD files. It's not because the sound in the DSD tracks is superior to the sound of a PCM track. It's because, the DAC receives the sound in its native format, and does not have to operate a conversion to DSD with its tiny chip (as it does when you play a PCM file). Since the chip of the DAC is not powerful enough to operate the conversion at high quality, the DAC sounds better when you feed it with DSD tracks that it does not need to convert. 

[Dandou]

55 minutes ago, Jud said:

whether PCM or DSD

Unfortunately, there's no way to get a good sound by inputting DSD to Chord DACs. 

The reason for that is that the only port through which it is possible to input DSD to Chord DACs is their USB port. But the implementation of the USB port in Chord DACs is very poor, and can be qualified as defective. When soud is input through this port, it triggers inside the DAC an Anamero chip that is extremely noisy. For this reason, it's better to avoid the USB port of Chord DACs, and to input through other ports. But their other ports are limited to a PCM input. 

[Dandou]

11 minutes ago, pl_svn said:

ok, but... Chord DACs are not delta-sigma 😉

and, btw, no Amanero USB receiver

All Chord DACs are Delta-Sigma. As far as I know, Chord does not produce R-2R DACs. 

The fact that the USB implementation in these DACs is poor is a special case. As they don't have a I2S port, there's no way to input DSD to them by bypassing their USB port. 

I'm not a Chord user, but as long as I remember, the chip that controls the USB port of Chord DACs is named "Anamero", and not "Amanero". 

[Dandou]

6 minutes ago, pl_svn said:

🙄 Chord DACs are FPGA

their USB receiver is proprietary as just everything

Their FPGA chip operates the upsampling. It's a proprietary chip indeed. 

Their USB implementation is also proprietary. As far as I know, the chip that controls this port in their DACs is called "Anamero". But if I'm mistaken about its name, it does not change the fact that the USB implementation sucks in these DACs. 

[Dandou]

Just now, pl_svn said:

all you have said about Chord DACs so far is just wrong, so the above is either just your opinion or... one more of those wrong/uninformed assumptions, sorry

I said nothing wrong about Chord DACs, check your facts with Chord users. 

[Dandou]

15 minutes ago, pl_svn said:

all you have said about Chord DACs so far is just wrong

To avoid the noisy USB port of their DAC and still upsample to high PCM rates of 768 KHz, Chord users use this device: 

 

https://audiobacon.net/2019/11/13/audiowise-inc-announces-src•dx-usb-to-dual-coax-s-pdif-bridge/

 

It's only utility is to avoid the USB port of the DAC. 

 

[Dandou]

Thank you for the correction. 

[Dandou]

11 minutes ago, Jud said:

It seems @jos has a couple of experiments he can do then.

It will be interesting if he posts us feedback. 

Upsampling to high rates of PCM and DSD to the USB port. Compare it to 192 KHz upsampling with the other ports, and to bit-perfect playback. 

[Dandou]

53 minutes ago, jos said:

My new LimeTree bride does not has an USB output

Is this the model of your LimeTree streamer? 

 

https://lindemann-audio.de/products/limetree-series/bridge/?lang=en#Technical_specifications

 

[Dandou]

1 hour ago, jos said:

As far as I know my Chord DAC is doing DSD over PCM (DoP).

You must be using a Mac, like me, because the Mac handles only DoP. But your Qutest can handle both Native DSD and DoP. 

[Dandou]

28 minutes ago, jos said:

I believe the Limetree 2 can't do DSD, which I don't mind.

This was the reason for which I asked you if this was the model that you bought. 

Since it does not support DSD, the whole discussion over DSD was irrelevant. And any way, for DSD input you have to use the USB port of the Qutest, which is not its best, and that unsurprisingly is not the one that Rob Watts recommends. 

[Dandou]

There's an interesting thread on Audirvana forum in which Studio users discuss UPNP issues with streamers, and post opinions on which streamers would work better with Studio : 

 

https://community.audirvana.com/t/auralic-recommended/31672

 

[Dandou]

25 minutes ago, rodrigaj said:

and @bobbmd suggested I come here.

You should post this issue on the forum of Audirvana. 

 

https://community.audirvana.com/latest

 

Antoine is answering to support requests there. I never saw him doing it on this thread. 

 

[Dandou]

1 hour ago, rodrigaj said:

I am happy to say, I am now streaming Qobuz.

I'm happy that you resolved the problem. 

Antoine is helpful, and Studio is a very good player for people who stream. 

[Dandou]

Hi @jos , 

 

Thank you for your post. This 11.1.0 release seems like a major update. 

I went to the forum of Audirvana to read some feedback about it, but strangely, 17 hours after its release, no one posted even a single word about this release. 

Please, let us know if the new features of this release work fine. 

I might subscribe to AS for a month to give it a try. 

[Dandou]

8 hours ago, mitch751 said:

a big improvement

Does it still analyze the albums with MusicBrainz' database? 

[Dandou]

Thank you, @jos . There's no hurry.

I'm also a bit busy at the moment. I'm planning to give a try to this new AS version in the weeks to come when I'll have more free time.