DACS vs Raspberry Dacs

[RafaPolit]

I got rid of my USB DACs after tinkering around with that crappy USB interface for years.
There are not that many DACs out there which wouldn't respond to USB tuning measures.
Even highly regarded DACs like the Chord Mojo benefit from USB tweaks. ( You can go much higher and still find many USB DACS that have similar issues.)

And all these USB tweaks are even more important on the PI.

All kind of USB gadgets I bought ( iPurifier2, Jitterbug etc.) - to achieve acceptable USB audio performance - are sitting idle nowadays. I don't need all that with my I2S HATs.

The PI I2S performance - with the Kali in place - IMO easily competes with the best USB-I2S interfaces out there.

As I said. I still use iFi iPower supplies. What really matters is the buffering, filtering and regulation onboard. I consider the iPower good enough for that purpose.

I've also been playing around with LiFePO4 + inmates MRAVCLA TPS7A4700 based regs.
I ended up for now using the iPower and using the TPS7A4700 as DAC LDO. ( Yep - no linear supplies - I've been also trying two of them)

Usually the overall result will (slightly) benefit from using separate supplies for each of the stacked boards.

I know this is a very old reply, but could you please elaborate to what those USB teaks are or point me in research direction? Thanks!
Rafa.

 

[soundcheck]

You might want to read e.g. this

And don't let you fool by other peoples conclusions!

... or (potentially flawed) measurements! (since years manufacturers offer "femto" seconds jitter and insane low noise levels! ...which obviously still doesn't get you the full picture)

You need to test stuff like this on your own system. This or that filter can make things even worse! ...on your particular system.
Many of these gadgets work quite well on an average quality setup though. Active is better then passive, external power is better than bus power, asf....
If you run a PI these gadgets are usually pretty useful. The PI comes with a rather awful USB implementation.


Good luck.

 

[RafaPolit]

Thanks very much for the link! I had a chance to try the Jitterbug in my system and wasn't able to hear any real difference. So, reading the 49/100 rating there gives me some hope that some of the others actually may present a more 'concrete' improvement. Some are really expensive (many times the value of a RPi), so one should wonder if this is the right approach!

Thanks again, very informative and useful thread. Best regards,
Rafa.