Multichannel DAC lobby!

[Trell]

Just rip the SACDs, as you say.

MCH layer is harder, sad to say, which most of my SACDs are.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

MCH layer is harder, sad to say, which most of my SACDs are.

Nonsense. Ripping the MCH DSD is the same procedure as ripping the stereo DSD except for ticking a different box in the setup.

 

[Trell]

Nonsense. Ripping the MCH DSD is the same procedure as ripping the stereo DSD except for ticking a different box in the setup.

Except when you can't get the hardware or it become obnoxiously expensive

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Except when you can't get the hardware or it become obnoxiously expensive

Not a problem these days.

 

[DWPress]

The recent review of the Motu Ultralite MK5 shows it to be a good contender for XO use and at half the price of the Okto.

Pro audio has many solutions but lack some of the features home audio often desires - like a remote!

 

[OdysseusG]

I'm interested. My use case is downstream of DEQX unit(s). For all I know the DACs they have are already decent but I preferred to go external for peace of mind. I'm currently using 3 M500s which do work but it'd be nice to to one unit just to reduce power cables.

 

[andymok]

The recent review of the Motu Ultralite MK5 shows it to be a good contender for XO use and at half the price of the Okto.

Pro audio has many solutions but lack some of the features home audio often desires - like a remote!

not in the sense of IR true, but if they do AoIP and are connected to a switch, they can be remote controlled just like your AVR, on your phones browser, 100m away with copper, 1km+ with optical fibre

 

[voodooless]

I’d lobby for an 8 channel Xmos enables Axign amp. You need amps anyway, so why not skip the separate DAC. Performance should be close to or on par with state of art Class D.

 

[Music1969]

Considering that the purchase numbers for the dac8 PRO are still in the hundreds over a year after its launch I wonder if the market really is there.

This the reality.

The only serious reason I could see @JohnYang1997 enter MCH, would be a MCH interface and try to get into the pro audio market with top notch specs/performance for great price...

It would be a massive project though. Like anything, if you want to break into a new/different market

On gearslutz forum there are Topping users (2ch) and general people looking at this forum in particular interested in measurements.

 

[Dichotome]

Any Mac can do it with a USB hub.

That is very interesting! So just to confirm, if I have say 6 channels set up in the JRiver convolver and I attach 3 (synchronised) DACs (via a USB hub if necessary) then I could route 2 specified channels to each DAC?

 

[Music1969]

Yes they do, Ravenna/AES67 is an open standard and application spans from music to film and broadcasting. Look further down in the download section and you will see.

https://www.merging.com/products/alsa_ravenna_aes67_driver

That's a nice looking webpage but I think you might find the number of people successfully using the Linux ALSA driver very tiny (due to problems with it and lack of support)

 

[Music1969]

That is very interesting! So just to confirm, if I have say 6 channels set up in the JRiver convolver and I attach 3 (synchronised) DACs (via a USB hub if necessary) then I could route 2 specified channels to each DAC?

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/audio-midi-setup/ams6e21c3f61/mac

 

[Dichotome]

@andymok that's not the use case I have in mind. Several of us have been looking for DACs that can be used for the output of software based active crossovers. Something like the D10b but with 8 channels would be ideal, at least to my way of thinking.

Exactly

 

[Dichotome]

I’d lobby for an 8 channel Xmos enables Axign amp. You need amps anyway, so why not skip the separate DAC. Performance should be close to or on par with state of art Class D.

I’ll keep my Colin Wonfor amps thank you . . .

 

[mitchco]

I would love to see a consumer 8 channel DAC that is easy to setup and configure.

In the meantime, this is a pretty good list of MCH DACs: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,126507.msg876687.html#msg876687

Pro AD/DA converters are more complex to setup, but worth it to me. The only objective comparisons I have seen is the AD/DA loopback test that ranks converters based on AD/DA transparency: https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.php?p=15463437&postcount=2349

I use a Lynx Hilo because of the transparency ranking above, plus Amir's ADC measurements and it has a multi-client ASIO driver that is rock solid. The latter allows me to use REW to measure my system with the FIR correction filter hosted in JRiver's convolution engine and using it's ASIO line input feature.

My system is a 3 way digital XO using linear phase crossover, driver linearization, driver time alignment, and digital room correction with excess phase correction: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/of...woofer-thread.1214550/page-1834#post-57390652

As much as USB mics are convenient, and software like REW, Acourate and Audiolense have ways to compensate for clock drift and differing start times per channel, I prefer to use an analog mic, mic pre and ADC that is on the same clock as the DAC. It consistently produces the best measurements results with the timing intact.

 

[Dichotome]

Great to see you on this thread Mitch. It was your articles on Audiolense that persuaded me that it was something I must try. I will be commissioning your services once my speakers are ready . Ian

 

[Dichotome]

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/audio-midi-setup/ams6e21c3f61/mac

Thank you for the link. It says you must set each of the devices that you want to aggregate to use the same sampling rate and bit depth. However most capable DACs will simply adapt to the input signal and I would not want to change that. If I was using say 3 identical DACs - which would all adapt to the input signal as I’ve described - would the aggregate device system work if I didn’t fix the sampling rate etc ?

 

[Music1969]

Thank you for the link. It says you must set each of the devices that you want to aggregate to use the same sampling rate and bit depth. However most capable DACs will simply adapt to the input signal and I would not want to change that. If I was using say 3 identical DACs - which would all adapt to the input signal as I’ve described - would the aggregate device system work if I didn’t fix the sampling rate etc ?

I have no idea, never tried it. maybe someone here that has tried can answer.

Good question though.

It's a cool feature baked into macOS. Not as simple to do on Win10 i think

 

[voodooless]

The actual answer is that the premise is wrong. Proper async USB DAC’s don’t adopt to the input, they dictate the timing, not the other way around. It is the OS that isthe slave in this case, and sends audio in when requested. The only thing the OS does is set the sample rate the DAC should use.

Now with multiple devices, you have multiple of those requesting audio samples, and this will not be in sync. So to keep them in sync, some kind of ASRC needs to be employed to keep it working. Easiest would be to use one of them as master timer, and then change the rest accordingly. In principal, the individual samples rates would not even matter anymore in this case.

What MacOS actually does, I don’t know..

Edit: seems like I was quite close: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202000

You can select one of the devices as master and select an option for clock drift correction (aka ASRC)

 

[chelgrian]

This the reality.

The only serious reason I could see @JohnYang1997 enter MCH, would be a MCH interface and try to get into the pro audio market with top notch specs/performance for great price...

Any product would have to meet multiple needs to be viable. In this case software crossovers and immersive monitoring are the two needs.

On the immersive side personally I'd like to see a collaboration with Genelec from someone to produce an AES digital interface which removes the need for 9301A summing boxes for immersive monitoring systems. Such an interface would have:

- between 12 and 16 AES outputs
- a GLM connection
- the summing that the 9302A can do configurable.
- a USB connection to the host

Beyond that if you then have a version that also has analogue outputs onboard then people who want to use it as a DAC can. Finally to make the analogue version useful to the pro audio market you'd need a version with a lots of onboard DSP to do speaker processing.

The latter analogue requirements would be fulfilled by a Digital Audio Denmark AX32 with an SPQ card. It's rather expensive though.

The AVID MTRX that is used for immersive monitoring with Pro Tools is a rebadged AX32 with AVID digilink added.