GoldenOne
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- Jun 25, 2019
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So, I should shortly be receiving a Holo May dac, and i'm a bit confused about some of the things that people have said about it/the spring online.
Typically, I'd just connect my DAC to my PC via a decent USB cable (Just a Supra one, not super cheap, but nothing snakeoil)
A lot of people have said that the holo dacs sound better when fed I2S input, rather than USB. And i'm wondering if there could be any truth to this.
As far as I can see there are three options:
Option 1: Connect DAC to PC straight USB
Option 2: Connect a good SPDIF bridge like the Singxer SU-2 or Matrix x-SPDIF 2 via USB, then the dac to the bridge via I2S
Option 3: Use a Pi2AES and connect the dac to the I2S output of that, so that in theory you avoid anything to do with USB altogether.
People have said that option 2 sounds better than option 1, but the only reason I can think of for this to be true is if the USB module or clock in your dac was worse than the bridge, which for some dacs may be true. But the Holo May has a much better USB module so I can't imagine this would be true. (The early spring dacs did have an iffy USB module which was later upgraded so this could be the reason for the subjective opinions about USB vs I2S online)
Am I missing something? Is there some other benefit to using a bridge vs just connecting the DAC via USB?
With Option 3, I'm guessing the benefit here is that you have nothing to do with USB at all. the Pi communicates via I2S to the pi2AES board, and then you output I2S from that whilst utilising the high quality clocks, so there should be no issue at all.
If anyone could shed some light on why Options 1/2/3 could be better than the others I'd really appreciate it.
Typically, I'd just connect my DAC to my PC via a decent USB cable (Just a Supra one, not super cheap, but nothing snakeoil)
A lot of people have said that the holo dacs sound better when fed I2S input, rather than USB. And i'm wondering if there could be any truth to this.
As far as I can see there are three options:
Option 1: Connect DAC to PC straight USB
Option 2: Connect a good SPDIF bridge like the Singxer SU-2 or Matrix x-SPDIF 2 via USB, then the dac to the bridge via I2S
Option 3: Use a Pi2AES and connect the dac to the I2S output of that, so that in theory you avoid anything to do with USB altogether.
People have said that option 2 sounds better than option 1, but the only reason I can think of for this to be true is if the USB module or clock in your dac was worse than the bridge, which for some dacs may be true. But the Holo May has a much better USB module so I can't imagine this would be true. (The early spring dacs did have an iffy USB module which was later upgraded so this could be the reason for the subjective opinions about USB vs I2S online)
Am I missing something? Is there some other benefit to using a bridge vs just connecting the DAC via USB?
With Option 3, I'm guessing the benefit here is that you have nothing to do with USB at all. the Pi communicates via I2S to the pi2AES board, and then you output I2S from that whilst utilising the high quality clocks, so there should be no issue at all.
If anyone could shed some light on why Options 1/2/3 could be better than the others I'd really appreciate it.