If the distortion is not in the source, it could be that the battery is simply providing a slightly higher voltage, and you have more headroom, so not clipping. Worth trying at a slightly lower volume setting... Digital clipping really sounds awful.
From what I understand, this is a 10m extension cable for connecting distant peripherals. It is optical so it isolates the devices but it relies on both connected devices' psu to work. Would the DAC USB input supply power to this and would that mean another noisy circuit gets attached to the DAC input?
Digital clipping has nothing to do with psu voltage.
Digital clipping occurs when you are converting from analog to digital, and you overdrive the AD converter, so it runs out of headroom. When it's already at 1111111111111111, it cannot go any higher, so the impulse is sharply cut off.
When you convert the signal back to analog, you'll get a lot of high frequency distortion and noise.
Johan-Kr
I thought DACs (like the yggdrasil etc) have higher quality usb receivers, power supply,circuits,etc than pc. And so noise from a pc usb bus does not make it into the quieter dac.
Quality DACs are expected to have better psu and clocks and they have to be isolated from the PC so that the noise from the PC won't affect the DAC circuits. Besides reclocking that is a matter or DAC's design, what is needed is galvanic isolation meaning that no external power supply is connected to the DAC usb port either from PC or from an optical to electrical converter as in the cable you mentioned. Only thing that must reach the DAC port is the digital signal and for this an ordinary usb cable is usually sufficient because quality DACs have allready isolated the psu wire coming from the PC. These optical fibers would only be usefull if the distance is too long. Even so, since they use signal converters at both ends most probably they are not going to work with good DACs because at the DAC end there won't be power provision.
To be honest I can't suggest any commercial product because I don't use any and never needed one. What I'm trying to say is that a well designed DAC keeps it's usb interface isolated by its own. The wire that carries the power supply from the PC is simply not connected anywhere inside the DAC. Isolators of some kind may be necessary if the problem is not addressed in the DAC. Is there any particular problem that you are trying to solve?
I get occasional dropouts of music.
Raspberry pi running moode->iFi DSD->headphones.
My internet is 50MB/s and mostly unused
There is no other traffic on my LAN
MPD in moode ( a basic linux distro for playing music) doesnt stutter or pause.
The play bar shows a constant progression.
The music just goes silent. For 2-3 seconds then resumes but further along in the song.
I was wondering if this could be a USB issue.
Raspberry pi running moode->iFi DSD->headphones.
My internet is 50MB/s and mostly unused
There is no other traffic on my LAN
MPD in moode ( a basic linux distro for playing music) doesnt stutter or pause.
The play bar shows a constant progression.
The music just goes silent. For 2-3 seconds then resumes but further along in the song.
I was wondering if this could be a USB issue.
Not likely to be a USB issue. What are you playing from? Internet channel? Hard drive? What is the "load" on the Pi processor? (hint, log into the Pi itself, and run "top" or even "uptime" to get system load.
source: NAS synology 1511+ or internet radio
Pi load 6% (as reported by top when i ssh into the pi)
network load negligible.
Pi load 6% (as reported by top when i ssh into the pi)
network load negligible.
Do you get the same dropouts from the NAS? If so, I would watch top for a bit, see what might be interfering. If it's just internet radio, about all you can do if it's bursty, is to increase the MPD buffers. I have had some success with that, though the problem turned out to be a drive going south...
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