kdwykleingeld

Hi thanks, this will give me enough food for thought (good reading in this thread) .. the IT has fw only so that will not be applicable for me. Currenty investigating the MOTU Ultralite MK 3 or the RME equipment (babyface / uc) .. unfortunately the babyface has some breakout cables and i dont like that.. any opinions on (users of) the MOTU ? reg koen

hi thanks ! and do you have any opinion on the "hifi" quality of the DACs within for example motu ultatlite mk3 native instruments audio 6 focusrite 2i2 and maybe teac a-h01 (combined amplifier / dac) and also on usage of so called active studio monitors for mainly listening (not living room but office) purposes versus an amplifier with passive speakers .. i have listened to several studio monitors and they sound great in the shop .. but its so difficult since its never quit in such environments... personally i am pretty afraid that an active studio speaker (even the better ones like e.g. genelec 8030a or Adam A5x or krk VXT) will give some noise / buzz when its not to loud due to the amplifiers close to the speaker cones.. but maybe i am wrong ? thx

thats why i used a passively cooled pc

the main thing i read with respect to Audio Interfaces is as low as possible "latency" (that is a term i do not read with respect to HiFy DACS) and my M1DAC seems to be an Asynchrounous DAC.. (and i do not see that with Audio Interfaces ...

Hi, in my living room setup i have a MF M1DAC and this works out fine. For my upstairs working room / studio i was considering buying a so called USB Audio Interface for the purpose of 1) playback towards studion monitors (adam) or amplifier with passive speakers (to be determined) 2) some recording of old disks (turntable) --- so analog to digital conversion 3) some podcast voice recording .. I am considering a Focusrite 2i4 (180 euro) or maybe a RME Fireface UCX (1000 euro) which gives me some more ports and firewire for future use.. and i guess even better DAC / ADC conversion quality ... But maybe there are other good alternatives between these boundaries .. the big plus for an audio interface being DAC and ADC combined My question .... looking from "audiophile" perspective to the playback function of a "Audio Interface" .. 1) Would a 1000 euro RME Fireface technically be as good as my 600 euro M1DAC ? 2) or are there fundamental differences between an Audio Interface and the DACs one buys in HiFi stores ? thx

hi actually i never ripped a dvd on this system.. i even do not rip cds here (i use dbpoweramp on my laptop) with the passively cooled i3 the system reemains very cool even after hours of playback reg koen

[TABLE=width: 100%] [TR] [TD=align: left]hi, i used : PicoPSU-90 DC-DC Power Converter, 90 W [/TD] [TD=align: left]picoPSU-90[/TD] [TD=align: center][/TD] [TD=align: right] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: left] Power Adapter DC 12 V, 100 W Level 5 (EU Power Cord Included) [/TD] [TD=align: left]PW-12V8A3-L5 [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] works very good ! reg koen

Hi, my progress... i have build a pc using a mini-itx intel board - core i3-2120t (35w) processor which is passively cooled in a streeacom enclosure and OS on the SSD and all my media on a ethernet attached Synology... the pc is powerd by a 90w picopsu and exteral 12v powersupply.. Sound coming out through the usb port via a simple usb cable to my m1dac and video over hdmi towards tv .. works great for me .. but maybe not 100% audiophile .. but i cannot hear the difference.. reg

As an additional question.. with respect to a "linear power supply" for a computer this means that you either 1) create a very stable / ripple-free / noise and hummmm freee 12v DC voltage witrh suffieent power (actually a ring-trafo with bridge rectifier and some capacitors / voltage regulator etc) AND combine that with a non-switching dc-dc convertor (such as pico psu -- but i have seen other pcbs - some in automotice aspect) that create the 3.3 5 12 and -12 outputs from there .... the main 12v power supply to be placed eiter in the enclosure or outside i guess .. the better the 12v is the better the otther outputs OR 2) some setup where the 3.3 / 5 / 12 and -12 dc voltages are created directly using linear voltage regulators / power transistors combined with a ring-trafo that delivers enough power and diffferent coil winding outputs (15 15 9 6) Looking at the high end (expensive) Power Amplifiers they alway have this kind of stuff onboard ... question... 1) are there any good threads / electronic schemas available specific for this purpose 2) what would be best approach.. i would like to see it all in the box with only one trafo and one pcb providing the required voltages .. and with a fanless case the voltage regulators etc mounted to the side thanks

hi thanks, can you extend a litte on the video part .. do you mean that it all comes to a media player that can utilize the hardware encoding of the gpu ? using a NAS i can get around the "big data" part. although i was considering using a few 2.5 inch disks (1 tb each) to have local / low-power / low-noise storage... any experience with such a setup ? Currently i have my eye on 1) a streacom fc050d fanless enclosure 2) intel mini-itx z77 mobo 3) intel core i3-2120t 4) 8gb ram 5) ocz vertex ssd 120 gb 6) sony optiarc slot dvd/cd odd 7) some mini.itx dc-dc convertor such as pico.psu 150W - or other (i would prefer some PCB to be mounted in the enclosure -- any suggestions for the BEST dc-dc convertor around .... (12 v dc input --- 3.3 5 12 -12 output) --- to be fed with switching external power brick and optimally with some linear 12v power supply... 8) some external 12vdc brick -- later to be replaced by a linear powersupply either external or internal with ring-trafo, voltage regulaters etc (mounted to the other side of the fc50d case) --- to be decided between 12v + dc-dc convertor or seperate linear supply per rail 9) maybe exteded with sotm usb card later on 10) maybe extende with sotm sat filter for the usb disk en odd later on 11) maybe exteded combined with synology ds 712+ NAS with 6TB storage (western digital red - nas) reg koen

hi, thanks, and looking to what you pump into the vlink192 over usb 2.0..... ...does adding stuff like "sata filters", "linear power supplies for each voltage and device", "special sotm usb cards" , "fan filters" etc.. to a modern / powerfull PC running a proper (memory) media player (such as jriver / foobar etc) playing properly ripped and verified cds (dbpoweramp) and outputting this asynchronously through its native motherboard USB port using proper drivers .. have any potential and /or significant impact on the quality of the sound ... ?? (actually i mean on the quality of the signal that the vlink192 combined with the DAC must make analogue .... thanks regards Koen thanks

Thanks... still hard to get ... assuming the "bits" are recognized properly on the other side in either case (imho this is the main task of the input side of the async DAC) and translated into corresponding / timed analogue this would mean that also some other part of the usb / electrical signal in the usb cable is also "picked up" some way by the DAC and added / mixed / passed-through to the DACS analogue output signal... This would imho mean that the DAC is not properly designed and isolated i would assume... Anyways.. "the market is always right" they say in trading ... so are the ears... Surely one can say if you are happy with how it sounds who bothers.. i also want to understand techniclaly how things work and want to elimate realistic bottlenecks.. thanks

hi eloise, thanks for all your replies ! Other question : in case of using an Async DAC such as M1DAC from MF would there be any technical reason to insert a pci USB card such as sotm USB into my PC in order to make an async USB digital signal any better ?? Under the assumption of bit-perfect ripped and verified CDS (dbpoweramp) , a good mediaplayer such as jriver / foobar and a modern PC motherboard .. Maybe one can make the signal edges steeper etc but as long as signal is within the Async DACs bit recognitions levels it would not make any difference to the output signal i guess if one would measure at the output of the DAC ... Same remark applies to adding sata filters, linear power supplies etc etc to a personal computer ... Imho these kind of measures can mmaybe make sense if you use an Audio Card in your PC .. OR if you have a Synchronous DAC ... OR if you want to make use of motherboard S/PDIF .... but if you output DATA through async USB it all comes to the DAC and a signal that is within boundaries ... which a regular usb port with proper procesing power can offer i assume ... any remarks .... i know that there are many opinions (some people even think dat a copy of a file can sound different..) ... but at some points in the digital part of the whole music chain a "bit-is-a-bit" i would say ... thanks

Thanks, nice overview of this system .. i guess going for a 35wTDP i3-2120t will put me on the save side for video playback with minimal amount of heat production and more than enough power for a media center. I will have a look at the Sotm usb card. There are several uATX boards that would fit in nicely in this enclosure that provide a PCI slot. Especially if you don ot require multiple harddisks in the case a uATX board can workout fine too i guess... The e350 looks ok for video playback but its a boundary case i guess.... Other real lifefield experiences with d525/ion2 or e350 for video playback ? reg koen