Weerstandje

Sorry for the late response Recently I talked to a fellow audiophile about the fibre-optic connection I made between my switches with sfp modules. We also discussed timing. He to said something about moving packets around, sometimes even in the wrong order and them still arriving safely at the streamer. He claimed that timing faults in the audio stream would lead to dropouts sooner then jitter effects. I wondered if audio-streaming is called streaming because, as opposed to file transfer, a pcm stream does not come in packages. For the same reason CD-s have to be ripped to an aif- or wav-file on disk because cd’s only contain the stream and have no checksum? If the later is true, streaming over glasfiber would be more prone to jitter, due to the bending of the cable giving light-reflections inside the cable, than streaming over an ethernet cable. Just like spdif is preferred over toslink as a connection between streamer and dac for instance? That made me wonder in what format music is streamed over the internet before it reaches the streamer and the dac?

In my home network are two Sotm ethernet switches. The first one is connected via the router to the outside world. From that first, standard Sotm switch (to which no hifi is directly connected) ethernet cables and a glasfiber cable fan out to other switches in other rooms. One of those is my other Sotm switch (connected with the glasfiber) that feeds my main hifi set. That last one is the better Sotm switch with a clock upgrade. Now the thing I am wondering about is whether I should change the switch with the clock upgrade to the middle of my network? In my thinking my other switches (two more simple but still hifi grade ones) and the second Sotm without the better clock would benefit from the more steady stream from the first? Or should the best switch be the last in the chain to feed my best hifi set? That’s how it is connected now, ‘cause this was the first hifi grade switch I bought. The other ones came later. I know, it is a matter of trying, but it is a hell of a job getting behind everything, unplug it and plugging it in again. So maybe the theory first? If there is theory behind it that is…

I just bought a Denali tower (the big one) in a good deal. Like mister Slapowitz in this tread already said: Shunyata discontinues or change and 'improve' their products quite a lot. Anyway, some years ago I tried Shunyata's VX series power cords on my dCS dac/Pass Labs amp set up and that seriously dampend dynamics. I removed those right away. Then I tried the VX successor Anaconda CX power cords that where hot 6 years ago or so and those did not change dynamics. I still have those CX cords. In the mean while Shunyata changed their products and product names at least 5 times. Recently I got a new Denali and a second hand then top of the CX line King Cobra power cord. With shunyata's flagship cord King cobra on the Denali again it dampend dynamics and at least DID change the sound but I just did not liked it, it made the sound 'soft', so I changed the King Cobra for my old Anaconda that theoretically is less good then the King Cobra (I did let the King Cobra burn in, even though it was second hand). I put the Denali in the set and removed it several times to hear the difference. My set is on a separate power line and both Pass Labs and dCS themselves have mentioned subtilly here and there that they are not fans of power filtering, the power supplies in their devices are top quality as it is. Indeed I must say that at best with the denali my set sounds just as good as without it, while other power tweaks i tried worsened the sound. Because I got the Denali in a very good deal I can't return it and I leave it where it is but I can't share the raving reviews on the net that mention huge sound improvements. You could say it speaks for the quality that the Shunyata Denali does not change the sound when the set already performs at its top. I think that people first have to consider if their set needs power filtering all together before buying/trying one......

Nice specs Does it have 2 wordclock inputs so it can sync to a dCS vivaldi clock or does it still need a dongle for switching between 44.1 and 48 kHz?

In an advert of a high quality cable manufacturer I read their cables don't degrade over time. So that made me wonder: do cables degrade over time? I mean I am sure that a cable wil stil work after ten years (or hundred) but according to some sound quality in cables are about 'unmeasurably' small differences that can make a lot of difference sound wise. I know capacitors can decay after a longer period of time, but those are not a cables 😉. I just bought a second hand Shunyata Hydra V-Ray of ten years old for instance, would/should that still work just as good as when it came right out of the box? Have any of you experienced decay of sound quality in cables or devices without moving parts after years of use?

First I owned (still do actually, but it is on sale) an Aurender N10. The best sounding server I heard so far. However it does not do anything with Roon an once you experienced Roon you don't want to do without it anymore. So I thought I'd do the 'cheaper option' and bought a Roon Nucleus to run the core/server. I put an SSD in it and even powered it from a Keces Lineair power supply. It sounded okay but compared to the Aurender N10 it was just thin and gray. After all it is a a cheaper NUC board and the N10 is build to be as silent as far as noise goes as possible. And the difference is there. So exit Nucleus and I got the Antipodes CX to run the core. It is connected directly over ethernet to a dCS Vivaldi upsampler and dac. The device is still in its run in period. It has played only 24 hours, but I must say that after 12 of playing time it already beats the Aurender soundwise . Instruments have even more space between them and I find everything more precise and easy sounding. And above all with the CX, my now best sounding source runs Roon Compared to that the Aurender user interface (conductor app) stays far behind. I don't think an extra CE will bring much because the dCS upsampler is already a Roon ready renderer/endpoint. On the other hand the CX has a heavy power processor and any heavy processing will generate noise. The CX deals fine with that noise, but if you separate the audio output handling (over usb to the dCS for instance) to a separate dedicated device like a low processing power CE, then it might lower any noise even further. But the CX on its own is the best front end I had as it is all ready.

Unfortunately no colour display.

It also seems to have 'dedicated audio usb'. I hop the word clock does the 'vivaldi mode', so that is can switch sync mode to 44,1 or 48.

The updated Aurender W20 'special edition': -isolated ethernet -linear power -all ssd -new clock

At the end of the video a new W20 special edition is introduced

https://dcs.community/t/dcs-launches-mosaic-a-powerful-new-music-streaming-platform-for-all-current-dcs-products/391 this announcement made me do a jump in the air higher then adviceable 😃

A while ago I had seen a picture of Jean Michel Jarre presenting his latest album with the use of a dCS Vivaldi dac. That made me wondering: what are the best AD converters that studio's use that could be in league with the best hifi dac's like the dCS Vivaldi?

Thanks for the reply. Indeed I can make the connections as you say. Works perfect. I was just interested in the theory. And I see my idea of async USB is wrong. Learned something again today ? thanks again

Hello, I am wondering why the folowing setup does not work: I have a dCS external clock connected to the word clock input of a dCS dac. I have an Aurender N10 that does not have an external clock input but it is connected to the clock over async usb. (The clock has an usb connection and a rca output to send the audio on to the dac’s rca input1). Now asynchronous usb is supposed to bypass the clock of the source (jittery computers mainly). When I set the dac to sync to the clock both devices are synced to that clock. The N10’s display also says ‘async 44.1 dCS Paganini’. So far so good and it works. Next I connect a digital RCA cable from the Aurender N10’s output to the dac’s (second) rca input and choose that for the audio stream but let the dac still be synced to the external clock. In theory the dac is synced to the external clock over the bnc cable and the Aurender is synced to the external clock over asynchronous usb. The audio stream goes over a spiff rca cable from Aurender to dac. No go, I get hiccups and dropouts. when I change the wordclock setting of the dac to sync to audio coming over the spiff rca input from the Aurender N10 all is well again. It is using the aurender’s internal clock then I suppose. While in my opinion the Aurender N10 is still syncing to the external clock over asynchronous usb, so why can’t the dac sync to that same external clock directly??

After the new system software update I can't seem to find the option to turn off the power on the N10's USB port anymore. Now, I AM known for not looking very wel, so I could be mistaking, or did Aurender really remove this option?