Experiences with USB to SPDIF converters?

I've been having a bit of a digital renaissance of late, brought on by Roon Labs and the Sonore MicroRendu. The latter doesn't play very nice with my McIntosh DAC's USB input, so I've been using my Peachtree X1 USB to SPDIF converter. And wondering if there's something better to be had in that realm.

On one hand, these are electronic devices with varying USB chipsets and clocks. There's definite room for them to be different from one another and thus better or worse. But on the other hand, digital products that aren't DACs tend to get accused of all sounding the same for good reason.

I'm curious if anybody has much experience with these products, and noticed improvements between devices.

 

yes. went from musiland usd to breeze du u8. its like getting a different dac or amp. id say a good converter is as important as the dac. my dac with the musiland sounds very bad, with breeze its incredible. the difference is not subtle at all

go for XMOS based. its definitely a big step forward in the tech.

as for people saying dac sounds the same, try it for yourself

XMOS XU208 USB BRIDGES - THE LATEST GEN HAS ARRIVED! »
AUDIO over IP - REDNET 3 & 16 Review. AES67 Sets A New Standard for Computer Audio »

this is the op updated rating lol
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Obviously these are my subjective ratings YMMV - and yes I have owned (had a loaner) all these for an extended period of time:



REDNET 3/Cerious Graphene/Mutec 3+ USB (SPDIF)/Antelope OCX (RN wClock) 270

REDNET 3/Cerious/Mutec 3+ USB/Audience au24 se digital cable 250

REDNET 3/Cerious/Mutec 3+ USB (SPDIF reclocker)/AS Sliver Statement dig cable 240

REDNET 3/Cerious Power Cord 220

Singxer F-1 DC30W/Cerious/Recovery/DCiPur/ iPur2/Startech GB LAN Iso USB 170

Mutec 3+ Smart Clock USB/Cerious Power Cord 155

Singxer F-1 DC30W/Cerious/Recovery/DCiPur/ iPur2 145

PUC2 Lite TeraDak DC30W/Cerious/Regen 135

Singxer F-1 DC30W/Cerious 135

DXIO Silver/TeraDak DC-30W/Cerious 130

Singxer X-1 DC30W/Cerious/Recovery/DCiPur/iPur2 125

PUC2 Lite - USB power 110

Singxer F-1 Stock feed 110

Breeze/Cerious Graph/WBT RCA Nexgen 109

Breeze DU-U8 with Cerious Graphene 108

Breeze DU-U8 (Talema version) 100

Breeze DU-U8 (BingZi version) 95

Hydra Z with LPS 92

Melodious MX-U8 (upgraded caps) 85

Melodious MX-U8 (stock) 81

Gustard U12 (upgraded caps) 76

Gustard U12 stock 72

iDAC DAC2 (used as a DDC) 65

Musiland USB3.0 US Dragon 65

M2Tech EVO with LPS 60

Audiophileo 2 USB Power 50

M2Tech Hiface 40
Note the two major leaps - one by adding the ICRON/Startech GB LAN Iso Audio USB Extender into the chain. Then the bigger leap away from USB completely to the REDNET3 Dante AES67 AOIP. The Mutec 3+ did not help as an ext Word Clock to the RD3 - but after the RD3 as a SPDIF reclocker - excellent.
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Thanks. That XMOS XU208 stuff, in particular this thing, are what led me to ask the question.

 

if your dac allow coaxial input, jump in!
my dac doesnt so I had to rely to breeze. would love to be able to get the f1

 

Wow - that is amazing.

 

I've used the Bel Canto USB converters quite a bit and think they work extremely well (actually using/listening to a REFLink connected to my Antipodes DS server as I type this message!).

 

Have you detected differences between two devices though? My current one doesn't seem to be doing anything wrong, and sounds basically indistinguishable from the McIntosh's USB interface (which works, it just requires unacceptable fiddle). I'm wondering what I will gain by going to a higher spec device.

 

Great question.....can't say that I've ever really done a back to back comparison b/t the Bel Canto options. Most of the time the REFLink is connected to my DAC3.7 and the uLink/mLinks were connected to a 1.5 or 2.5. (before the .7 updates were done)

 

My recent experience with getting the USB board in my Yggdrasil replaced (and installing an old MSB Link DAC in its place while it way away), got me thinking about the sound differences between DACs.

As I wrote in the Yggydrasil thread, I'm pretty happy with the sound of the Yggy, which I think has a pretty good top to bottom presentation. It was interesting to compare it to the sound of the MSB, which I think lacked some midrange, or felt a little heavy on the treble and bass. I'm completely computer based now, but my previous player was an Esoteric UX-03 which had a different presentation altogether from the Yggy and MSB. The Esoteric emits a broad, almost sparkling, soundstage that sounds pretty amazing, but I was never sure if that sound is realistic or artificial (too sweet).

Anyway, that got me thinking about if there was a way to squeeze more performance out of the Yggy and I had read good things about the XMOS chipsets in other places and as part of this thread.

So, I picked up a Singxer F-1 to try out. It has barely reached room temperature since I opened the box that was sitting outside in the cold winter air, but it's in my system now. Installing it into my Mac was a non-issue as it was immediately recognized.

I randomly queued up something in the recent folder, which happened to be Donna Summer - Four Seasons of Love. On this, I'd say I hear a very slight improvement in soundstage. Next I queued up Iona - The Circling Hour. This is some pretty elaborate Irish prog rock, lots going on. Here, I wouldn't say I noticed the same soundstage improvement, but it seemed like there were some differences compared to the direct USB connection: slightly deeper bass, miscellaneous differences here and there that I seemed to detect. Slightly different sounding to be sure, wouldn't necessarily say better or worse at this point. Also played Dance on a Volcano by Genesis, which has typically thrown a nice big soundstage for me, wouldn't say I detected any difference here.

Anyway, just wanted to report my initial impressions and see if others have ventured down a similar digital to digital path with their DACs. I'm curious if I'll hear other differences longer term as I play more material, or if there is any burn-in effect.

 

so the question is, what would make one usb to spdif converter sound notably different than another, and is that even a good thing?

 

Also a good question.

The range of options here would be pretty wide from the low-cost Singxer F-1 @ $183 to the Berkeley Alpha USB at 10x that price. The Alpha USB points out the care that is used in isolating the noisy USB input portion from the digital audio output portion. These devices seem to be more around timing rather than cleaning up dirty inputs, but maybe cleaning is a requirement in getting a low jitter signal output, I'm not sure. The basic design and implementation based on XMOS chipsets must be quite similar.

I haven't heard an Alpha USB, but I might be crazy enough to buy one if it made a big difference in my system.

 

I have the Singer F-1 as well. I definitely love its design, appreciate that it passes DSD to those rare unicorn DACs that can do DSD over coaxial, but would be hard pressed to be able to identify sonic differences. And as said above, that's probably a good thing, this is the sort of device that should perform a function but stay out of the way.

On the other hand, I think it's a better USB implementation then Schiit's, and not as fragile (I too had the USB board replaced in my Schiit DAC, and after the second time it broke just gave up on it). So I'm not surprised at reaper's experience of better sound quality. It might not be doing something better as much as not doing anything worse then the Schiit's USB, if that makes any sense.

 

Something that I think is really interesting about the Singer is that it uses I2S internally to make this bridge, which seems like a good way to implement this. For those unfamilair, I2S is the technology originally used in CD players to bridge the transport to the DAC, and is begining to make its way into various digital streamers and DACs today.

 

Thanks for this!!! I too had a USB board replaced in my Yggy. Thought it was a fluke. I have since purchased two iFi iLink USB to S/PDIF converters for the Yggy and a Gumby. I don't want to say, "night and day", but the increase in sound quality was significant and unmistakable. I'm using the "high" output and a custom Blue Jeans RCA <-> BNC cable (orange of course) for each DAC. Because these are PCM-only DACs, I don't see myself going back to USB.

 

Does anyone think one of these newer XMOS chipsets would make a noticeable difference going in-between a PC and an older Yamaha TOTL AV receiver?