S/PDIF vs. AES/EBU

[jan.didden]

This depends on how the DAC deals with imperfection of the signal or transmission-induced noise. If the DAC recovers the embedded clock of AES/EBU or S/PDIF, then it is highly likely that the reconstructed analog waveforms will be different, hence sonically discernable.
[snip]

Indeed. There was an AES paper by Hawksford and Dunn "Is the AES/EBU interface flawed" where they showed that if the DAC recovers the clock from the data, the jitter is even dependent from the bit pattern, meaning the jitter depends on the music!
That lead Benchmark Media to develop their 'zero jitter' DACs where you have a super clean local clok that runs on its own, and a large digital buffer. The digital stream fills the buffer and the DAC reads it out with its own super-clean clock. No jitter. No cable issues.
There are others that do the same, its just that I know the Benchmarks (have no affiliation with them) and their very affordable price. You typically find them in studio's for monitoring the recordings you are going to buy later 😉

jd

 

[tritosine]

ASRC dac like benchmark have jitter spectrum thats very pure. An ASRC is short FIFO buffer followed by interpolation . One previous post said that the jitter cross coupled thru the FIFO buffering some of those players had. Thats interesting. Maybe you need 2 FIFO . 😀

 

[CosmoA]

SPDIF in pictures

The Benchmark DAC has a 50 ohm BNC connector (for a 75 ohm interface)followed by a couple of widely space wires connecting it to the PCB (high characteristic impedance)that also acts as a large loop area to pick up RF noise in the DAC. Stick a RCA to BNC adaptor in there for your favorite RCA connectored digital cable...

Gee I wonder why you can't here decent digital cable differences. Yes I'll bet they use resampling!

These people have the engineering talent to do better than this for the SPDIF interface, it is sad. This is pretty typical for ever high priced DACs.

 

[bordins]

followed by a couple of widely space wires connecting it to the PCB (high characteristic impedance)that also acts as a large loop area to pick up RF noise in the DAC.

I guess it is inside the metal enclousure of the DAC so it is considered "RF-safe". The RF inside would be relatively low, and the short cable distance can tolerate it. BTW, the torroid is much furthur away. 😀