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Motherboard SPDIF vs Topping D10 (or other USB bridge) SPDIF?

Ron Texas

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If the SPDIF is optical often the motherboard is limited to 24/96 as a practical matter.
 

RayDunzl

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bequietjk

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Great point Ron, one reason to do the conversion to escape the limiting factors of optical out.

My mobo has optical out and is how I route my audio to my ENOG2. But, because of my curiosity my D10 is on it's way and am hoping to find some kind of benefit by going PC > USB/D10 > SPDIF-COAX/ENOG2. I keep reading information on how the light transfer of optical can be unreliable without a very well manufactured cable (the 4million strands of glass optical cables that are available."
 

RayDunzl

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I keep reading information on how the light transfer of optical can be unreliable without a very well manufactured cable (the 4million strands of glass optical cables that are available.

The optical cable used at home is plastic core multimode. I wouldn't worry too much unless you are trying to achieve or extend the maximum distance. I see 10 meters quoted.

Singlemode Glass fiber is used for distance (60 miles or more is possible before amplification and dispersion correction or regeneration) with the appropriate transmitters and receivers.
 

bequietjk

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Ray you mentioned you have the signstek in another post that I read. Is it feeding into your DAC? and have you found any difference?

Part of me is wondering if it is either a matter of spending on either the singstek low cost converter or just pay the sum and anty up for the audiophilleo. No in-between.
 

RayDunzl

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I didn't notice a digital defect via in-room measurements. It was carrying test signals from REW to the system, at 44.1 and 48kHz..

However, the signstek has problems with its analog output at 48kHz sample rate. I didn't use it for that, but tried it just to see.

It's been replaced by a D10 (for no particular reason).
 

metal571

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Believe it or not I use this with my work desktop to add optical out, and it actually works great. I'm gonna have to snag a D10 next time there's a drop though because this cheapy adapter has a limited number of sampling rate and bit depth settings and well, the D10 just looks good. Might as well add it to my collection since I already have D50... I swear if Topping makes a black painted balanced DAC on the level of D50 or better that's such an instabuy for me. They need to do this.
 

pomstazlesa

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there are many USB to S/PDIF device you could choose from but I tried looking for HDMI to S/PDIF and this SMSL SH-1 seems the offer best performance for the price. Any better suggestions, for HDMI to S/PDIF?
 

RayDunzl

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looking for a simple usb>spdif bridge ... ... i imagine that more modern xmos implementation would do better on jitter than say, this old V-link, which i have lying around


If jitter is high on your worry list, maybe it would be best to have a DAC that can properly handle jittery inputs.
 
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