Dead Goon

I managed to find some information on the Dac Essensio which implements the exact same hardware as the Dac32, only difference is that the Dac32 operates in dual mono and therefore uses double recievers, upsamplers and chipset, as well as having separate power supplies for the analog and digital sections. Here's what i found. The Essensio is equipped with an high end USB2.0 Hi-Speed (4BOMbit/secl interface. This new and advanced interface can receive a digitai stream up to 1 92kHz-32bit beyond the 96kHz limit. Custom drivers for PC and MAC allows the "bit perfect" transfer between the computer and the DAC. This interface is asynchronous; the incoming data are redirected to a FIFO memory and re-clocked with an high precision clock. To avoid any interference between the USB ground and the DAC ground, the signals coming from USB input are magnetically coupled with an hi-speed ADUM1400. Upsampler section The signals coming from USB and SPDIF inputs are upsampled to 192kHz-32bit with the new Cirrus CSB421. At the same time the 192kHz upsampled data are re-clocked with a very low jitter clock oscillator. DAC section The Essensio is equipped with the new Texas PCM1795 a 1 92kHz-32bit DAC with a 123dB dynamic range. This DAC allows a 1 92kHz-32bit direct path from USB input to analog stage.

What do you mean by adaptive? I might have missed something but as far as I know the Dac32 is an asynchronous device. 2nd party USB drivers are supplied and the computer recognizes it as "North Star Design S/PDIF Interface"

Hi Michael Funny you should mention this right now, I have postponed it for ages but yesterday I finally got around to purchasing the USB Dac32. I have not yet had time to properly evaluate it with my own surrounding equipment yet. I am also not the best person to judge S/N ratios or intermodulation distortion, because I never measure my equipment but am quite content with listening. I'm using it with a set of ProAc Studio 140 MkII, a Rotel 1520 (next on the list for changing), Chord Anthem unbalanced interconnects, Epic Twin speaker cables and an Entreq USB cable (6 ft). Not very high end, yet, but it is a very musically involving system My first impression is that it is very open and transparent in the midrange and treble, dynamics and depth is an other world compared to my still very good, though cheap, Chord Chordette. The overall tembre is navigating to the lighter side and I am almost inclined to call it a bit analytical, not at all the sugary-sweet sound I'm used to from the italians. It's still a very rich, musical sound. I will be back in a few days with a bit more in depth review.

Thanks for the input. I have not tried Wasapi, although i have tried kernel streaming through the M2Tech HiFace output to the V-Dac. The V-Dac is as far as I know capable of 192/24 through the coax input, which was the one i used. That made every program freeze and was the basis for my concern that it was Windows related. The problem was hardware related after all though, yesterday I got the oppertunity to play around with the North Star Design USB dac32 and it worked like a charm. I used MM w. Asio, tried a 176.4/24 file and it worked right away. I own a Chordette Gem and I know that it's limited to 96/24 on USB, so my main concern at the moment is not being able to play 192/24, rather my fear that Win7 might degrade the sound quality. Everytime I have a noticeable problem with it I start thinking about how many problems I have that I do not notice. My feeling is that one should not use Windows unless with some kind of asynchronous DAC. But I see that many here use Win and my guess is that you guys are way more competent in this field than I am. Many thanks for your help guys! I will try Jriver and see if that improves anything, always on the lookout for that extra percent.

Hello, I'm new to the forum and kinda new to the whole concept of playing music through a computer. I've been reading the forum for a while though but have not gotten an account until now because I have felt I have not had anything to contribute. I still don't but humbly ask for your assistance with a small problem. I'm running Win7 64bit through a Chord Chordette Gem, I'm running MediaMonkey with mostly FLAC and AIFF files. The problem is that any time i try to play anything with a higher sample rate than 48 kHz the application freezes. This happens every time and i have tried MM with ASIO4All. I have also tried Foobar with no change in behavior and I have tried running through a Musical Fidelity V-Dac both through USB and through a M2Tech HiFace (USB to coax adapter said to output 192/24 via kernel streaming) I can get the files (that are in FLAC btw) to play using the normal output on MM so i think the problem is with kernel streaming. When i get them to play via the normal output drivers I get no change in sound quality from normal 44.1 files. I suspect that the problem is with windows and have heard through a friend that win7 64bit never does anything in real time, ever. I also have a problem with a loud clicking noise in my speakers when the software changes sample rates and I think that this is because my DAC has a built in clock which wants to work in real time and is fighting windows. This problem does not appear with the MuFi V-Dac which I strengthens my suspicions that this is the case. Does anyone know what this could depend on, is this fixable and in what case how? I've been thinking of changing Operating system to Fedora 13 with "Planet CCRMA at home", but since I've been a Windows guy all my life I suspect that my very limited experience of Linux is not enough by far for me to do anything right with Fedora. Therefore I would like to find another solution. Any feedback is very appreciated. BTW, keep in mind that english is not my first language and I have some trouble expressing myself in it.