Does your server have or does Antipodes offer a Pro ISL output like the Pink Faun Ultra 2.16? I talked with someone who is familiar with both PF and Oladra who preferred the Oladra into the Cascade but only compared the two using the USB outputs of each. The Pro ISL output from the PF Ultra 2.16 was not available at the time of the evaluation. I would imagine the Pro ISL would distinguish and favor the PF from the Oladra if the Oladra only offers USB out.
Like the Oladra, my Antipodes Kala K50 has an I2S (HDMI) output which I will use with my Premier + DD and the I2S module.
There are only rumors (wishes?) that Antipodes are working on a Pro ISL output such as Pink Faun have done. I have no idea if they are or are not.
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Antipodes has discussed this in a recent post in their forum that they prefer I2S / āregular USBā / AES over pro-USB, stating the pro-USB is for noisy source like a PC. I think what they say make sense but always trust your ears! If youāre pairing any source with a DD, I doubt if itās still beneficial to add another layer of Optic / Electric conversion from the source to DD as thereās already one layer from DD to DAC and the sound might be too clean if two runs of Pro-ISL is adopted. For me Iām settled with I2S on my Oladra G4 w/ full squeeze playback and Iām very happy.
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I like the video posted above a lot. I only have two issues with it.
First, it is ambiguous how it suggests noise enters the DAC over power and ground. Is it through the power supply mains, or power and ground wires in the data cable? If the mains is what was meant, then the dozens of switch mode power supplies in most houses such as phone chargers need to be considered. A DAC that is sensitive to noise on its mains input is going to have problems regardless of the streamerās behavior.
The second issue I have with the video is it lumps all input types together. Not all connection types have wires for power and/or ground. It would have been useful to present the vulnerabilities individually for each input type. TOSLINK obviously does not have any electrical wires at all, so noise infiltration over power or ground is not possible. Although USB has power and ground wires, these are generally not used by self powered DACs. The two wires that are used are differential signals that are compared with each other, not ground. So noise infiltration into self powered DACs over power or ground is also not possible with USB. Good old coax S/PDIF does use a ground wire, so noise infiltration is possible with poor implementations. The list of input types goes on. My point is not all DAC input types are vulnerable to the power and ground noise infiltration described generically in the video.
The video specifically put my favorite configuration out of scope. I prefer DACs with Ethernet inputs. Ethernet has no power or ground wires and uses two sets of twisted pair wires for a differential signal in both directions. So noise infiltration over power or ground is again not possible in this case. With the streamer and DAC functions in the same box, the engineer has complete freedom to integrate the two in an isolated fashion using any method they choose. This includes proprietary solutions such as the Render V2 module in a MSB DAC. A good engineer with a healthy budget and no constraints imposed by interface standards should be able to achieve excellent isolation.
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Is MSB going to be ācertifiedā for āPlays with Audirvanaā like it is with JCAT?
Hello @idrachman ,
It will be as soon as I go through the process! Iām actually going to setup and do it right now. Thanks for asking.
Good to hear Jonathan. Would be great if you can also share your ārecommendedā Audirvana upsampling settings. I would like to compare what Iām using and do some testing with yours where different. Thanks.
My recommendation for all software settings for upsampling, EQ, and volume leveling is the same. Donāt do any of it. Keep the playback native.
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I would add, use streams that are in the sampling rate they were recorded/mixed at. Unfortunately sometimes you really canāt determine what that rate is.
Dan
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Thank you - yes I agree and Iām not upsampling (Upsampling = None). Even so, there are other settings within Upsampling - Algorithm Settings that look like they are still active and can be changed: Bandwidth (% Nyquist), Stop Band Attenuation (db) and Phase. My settings are: Bandwidth 95%, Stop band attenuation 176db and Phase at Minimum. Do you have any experience with these and if so, any recommendations? Thanks again.
Hi
If you own an MSB DAC, you want the DAC to be doing ALL of the digital signal processing (DSP). It makes no sense to upsample or alter the incoming bit stream before it hits the MSB DAC because that processing is precisely what you are paying MSB to do (among other things). So, all of those filtering settings should be off.
Similarlyāand Daniel/Jonathan please correct me if I am wrongāsince MSB is going to put the incoming big stream into a buffer before DSP anyway, you should be able to use virtually any music server with great results.
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Do you use Audirvana? I asked because wtr these specific settings (for SOX or R8Brain) are still enabled even though my Upsampling switch is set to off. I have asked Audirvana for clarification.
Response as of this morning, Audirvana have confirmed they DO NOT affect the signal sent to the DAC if Upsampling is turned off.