A NOS 192/24 DAC with the PCM1794 (and WaveIO USB input)

I agree on this. But you do connect one of the hot sides of the DAC (both POS and NEG are hot) to the whole GND system of your sound chain. Specially when other stuff is connected to the amplifier, like radio cable or ethernet cable you will get nice HUMM loops.

The simplest things is (there is your (capacitive) loop) to try reversing the mains plugs 180 degrees. Try all 4 combinations from DAC and your amplifier.

Just for fun, you could try an extra 1:1 transformer between mains and amplifier or DAC

These things needs just some tweaking and trying
 
I agree on this. But you do connect one of the hot sides of the DAC (both POS and NEG are hot) to the whole GND system of your sound chain. Specially when other stuff is connected to the amplifier, like radio cable or ethernet cable you will get nice HUMM loops.

The simplest things is (there is your (capacitive) loop) to try reversing the mains plugs 180 degrees. Try all 4 combinations from DAC and your amplifier.

Just for fun, you could try an extra 1:1 transformer between mains and amplifier or DAC

These things needs just some tweaking and trying

I think I will try a dual mono pre, with earth lift on both negatives. If I use 100r earth lift this should be enough to break the ground loop. I'll report back!
 
Hello,
The cable in this link could be a nice one to connect aurender to my dddac.
Oyaide Neo d+ Class A USB 2.0 Cable | The Absolute Sound
Can be bought at shops that sell gear to dj's
Greetings, Ed

I just don't believe this kind of cable porn will make ANY difference in sound. A properly working USB interface will just send or receive bits and bytes. As long as they go through the cable, all is good. If not, the data stream is broken, and sound stops. There's not much room for anything in between.
 
I2s Splitter

I need to split the I2S signals from the Wave IO board to feed 2 DDDAC main boards.

I have drawn a circuit in Eagle that I think would do the job, but I would like someone to look at my design in case I have made some fatal errors before I draw the PCB.

The isolator is the IL715 as used on the Wave IO board

Many thanks, Alex.
 

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I2S Splitter

If the two DDDAC's are supplied by the same power supply you don't need anything as complicated as you are showing. The I2S from the WaveIO isolator can drive a lot of DDDAC board layers. Unless each of your DDDACs have more the 4 DAC layers, all you need is a signal splitter PCB or connector.

I don't see the advantage here of two smaller PS instead of one large PS for two DDDACs. I Plan to power three DDDAC's after my Najda DSP crossover using one power supply system consisting of a Salas 8VDC for the analog side of the PCM1794's, PowerOne +/-12VC for the buffers, and unregulated 7.5VDC for the digital side of the PCM1794's and main boards.

Start simple. You can always go more complicated later. Isolators add jitter.
 
If the two DDDAC's are supplied by the same power supply you don't need anything as complicated as you are showing. The I2S from the WaveIO isolator can drive a lot of DDDAC board layers. Unless each of your DDDACs have more the 4 DAC layers, all you need is a signal splitter PCB or connector.

I don't see the advantage here of two smaller PS instead of one large PS for two DDDACs. I Plan to power three DDDAC's after my Najda DSP crossover using one power supply system consisting of a Salas 8VDC for the analog side of the PCM1794's, PowerOne +/-12VC for the buffers, and unregulated 7.5VDC for the digital side of the PCM1794's and main boards.

Start simple. You can always go more complicated later. Isolators add jitter.

agree, as the mainboard already has a buffer/driver, the only load the waveIO will see is two times the inputs for the buffer. should be ok, to just split physically the I2S signals straight from the WaveIO
 
agree, as the mainboard already has a buffer/driver, the only load the waveIO will see is two times the inputs for the buffer. should be ok, to just split physically the I2S signals straight from the WaveIO

I have tried 1 connector from the Wave IO board feeding 2 main boards just using the ribbon cable, but there is a bit of a pop and crackle which is the same as when I tried to run 2 stacks of 16 Dac boards with SPDIF input.

Also when driving 2 main boards from 1 Wave IO causes the 5v regulator on the RH main board to get very hot as 2 supplies from the main board are joined together which is like paralleling
the 2off 5v feeds to the Wave IO.

So if I can get confirmation that my circuit is OK, I will get the PCB made up 🙂
 
well, I did and even though I also thing it is "strange" I ended up with a nice silver line USB cable (80 Euro or so)

I guess it is not about changing 1 and 0. It is about signal return path and possible timing effects

Hello,
Doede told me i should try swapping cables between Aurender and the DDDAC because he has no financial interest in persuading me to buy some cables and because he has always been an honest man to me why should i doubt his words?
The cable i mentioned does not have a lot of '' snake oil, voodoo or audiofool '' in its '' white paper '' so i convinced myself to give it a try.
I was already around audiophiles when my favourite shop at that time did start changing the standard phonocables by Neglex( i think they are still in business using Mogami brandname).
Of course there is autosuggestion. That is why most gear looks so bling bling.
The new cable will go directly from the wave IO circuit usb connector to the Aurender so skipping the Neutrik chassis connector. Total cable length will be 100 centimeters and now it 70 cm divided into two parts. I hope it will be an improvement lol
Greetings, Eduard
 
well, I did and even though I also thing it is "strange" I ended up with a nice silver line USB cable (80 Euro or so)

I guess it is not about changing 1 and 0. It is about signal return path and possible timing effects

There is no snake oil in cable technology, there is only snake oil in the marketing department. The commercial prizes are not related to the quality, only to the amount of snake oil (and marketing budgets) the marketeers are using.

There will be differences between cables due to the way they are designed (together with the connectors).
Stuff like: Impedance matching to prevent reflection of signals that will influence the signal and can mix up 1 and 0, introduce jitter (timing effects), noise level, also differences in shielding, use of more or less magnetic (bad) materials in connectors (cheap Chinese stuff).........
 
Hello,
Belkin is one of the leading brands.
The brand i got today is also a not typical audiophile brand. I think it is very well constructed.
Did connect it a few hours ago. Impression so far bigger ambiance, easier to understand the lyrics. Last one very difficult to consider as autosuggestion because either you understand the word or you need to google to find the albums lyrics. And some of these albums i did have for decades.
So nice cable.
It appears ( that is what i read) that even digital cables need some time to give their best. I hope there will be some further improvement. But so far it sounds well balanced.
Greetings, Eduard
 
I have build my own USB cables for the wave IO in the past. Easy to do and high quality for a low price!

Ingredients: connectors, pure silver wire (0,4mm) cotton sleeving. Costs: eur5,-
You can decouple the ground wire to isolate the ground coming into the wave IO.
The cable can be made very short so you can connect a Raspberry Pi kind of streamer directly on your wave IO.

The next level in quality is I2S connecting directly to the dac input.
 
Hello,
I did not want to diy a cable for this connection to afraid to ruin the Aurender and/or the DDDAC. Greetings, Ed
Next thing i wanna try is using some kind of transformer to '' isolate '' the Aurender and? the DDDAC from the rest of my gear.
greetings, Eduard
 
I tried i2s from Odroid C2 to dac i2s input. It sounds good, but with Aurender and waveio it's another ballgame. Much more analog and natural sounding. For the first time digital outperform my 150 lbs vinyl rig.

In theory I2S is superior to spdif because it has a separate bit and word clock resulting in much lower jitter.

However if a streamer board like odroid or rpi is connected directly with I2S you will pollute the ground of the dac with the ground noise of the streamer and if no reclocking is used the jitter will be higher because of the bad clock quality of these boards. Note that a computer does not need an accurate clock because it mostly does not have a real time decoding task.

My wave io was surpassed a long time ago by a rpi with acko reclocker and isolator board.

Now I use a beagle bone black with a real master clock and isolation from a cronos-hermes board from twisted pear. This is the best setup I have ever used and I assume in the near future nothing will be able to better this setup!

Next up is experimenting with rpi-kali reclocker, I expect good quality but not at the level of the bbb.