This is a review and detailed measurements of HoloAudio XEME2VE USB to SPDIF Converter. It allows you to connect a DAC that only has S/PDIF input to the USB jack of your computer. It is on kind loan from a member. Retail price appears to be USD $169 but the company has it on sale for USD $99.
As little boxes go, this feels unusually good and solid:
There is fair amount of heft to it which should stop most cables from tugging on it.
There are no external power supplies so all you have to do is connect the USB cable and S/PDIF to your DAC and you are in business. An indicator which shows it is powered on and happy would have been handy but is not critical in this application.
The XEME2VE is plug-and-play compatible with Windows 10 Creators Edition which means it is UAC2 compliant so should be driverless on Mac and Linux (or streamer of your choice).
Let's measure it to see how it performs.
Measurements
For these devices, sometimes I resort to measuring the quality of S/PDIF interface itself. But ultimately what you care about is how your DAC performs with it. To that end, I hooked my Schiit Modi 2 Uber to it which I know to have sub-par USB implementation. Measuring its native USB implementation versus S/PDIF through XEME2VE showed no difference in SINAD (signal over distortion and noise). So I resorted to the more sensitive jitter test:
Note that this graph is highly amplified vertically with the top of the graph being -70 dB (the signal itself is at 0 dBr).
With the USB interface on Schiit Modi 2 Uber, we see a set of spikes (in blue) around our main tone of 12 kHz. They are very symmetrical and indicate low frequency jitter components (some likely from its power supply). When connected via its XEME2VE driving its S/PDIF input, those spikes go away indicating that the XEME2VE USB implementation is cleaner than that of Schiit Modi 2 uber.
Of course the XEME2VE can't perform any miracles to lower the rather high noise floor (due to random jitter in Modi 2 Uber), or the two tall spikes at +- 4 kHz relative to our main 12 kHz tone. Those are inherent to the implementation of Modi 2 Uber.
In a recent review I showed the same test but driving a much better DAC: the Digital Amplifier Company's DAC DAC:
We see that the output is identical to using my high-fidelity Audio Precision S/PDIF output (blue). Hard to ask for anymore.
As with Schiit Modi 2 Uber, SINAD did not vary with or without XEME2VE converter.
Conclusions
While my tests are not exhaustive, the Holo Audio XEME2VE seems to be a well implemented USB to S/PDIF converter. At its current sale price, it fetches some premium over cheaper converters which can be had for nearly half its price. The higher look and feel should be enough to justify the small incremental cost anyway.
Given all of this, I can recommend the Holo Audio XEME2VE for a USB to S/PDIF converter for legacy DACs. For new DAC purchases, you should get a unit that has good, native USB support. There is no advantage to having it internal (if anything, it is harder to make an external unit perform well than an internal one).
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
They say you should save money for a rainy day. It rains for about 6 months here so I need plenty of money!!! Please consider donating funds using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
As little boxes go, this feels unusually good and solid:
There is fair amount of heft to it which should stop most cables from tugging on it.
There are no external power supplies so all you have to do is connect the USB cable and S/PDIF to your DAC and you are in business. An indicator which shows it is powered on and happy would have been handy but is not critical in this application.
The XEME2VE is plug-and-play compatible with Windows 10 Creators Edition which means it is UAC2 compliant so should be driverless on Mac and Linux (or streamer of your choice).
Let's measure it to see how it performs.
Measurements
For these devices, sometimes I resort to measuring the quality of S/PDIF interface itself. But ultimately what you care about is how your DAC performs with it. To that end, I hooked my Schiit Modi 2 Uber to it which I know to have sub-par USB implementation. Measuring its native USB implementation versus S/PDIF through XEME2VE showed no difference in SINAD (signal over distortion and noise). So I resorted to the more sensitive jitter test:
Note that this graph is highly amplified vertically with the top of the graph being -70 dB (the signal itself is at 0 dBr).
With the USB interface on Schiit Modi 2 Uber, we see a set of spikes (in blue) around our main tone of 12 kHz. They are very symmetrical and indicate low frequency jitter components (some likely from its power supply). When connected via its XEME2VE driving its S/PDIF input, those spikes go away indicating that the XEME2VE USB implementation is cleaner than that of Schiit Modi 2 uber.
Of course the XEME2VE can't perform any miracles to lower the rather high noise floor (due to random jitter in Modi 2 Uber), or the two tall spikes at +- 4 kHz relative to our main 12 kHz tone. Those are inherent to the implementation of Modi 2 Uber.
In a recent review I showed the same test but driving a much better DAC: the Digital Amplifier Company's DAC DAC:
We see that the output is identical to using my high-fidelity Audio Precision S/PDIF output (blue). Hard to ask for anymore.
As with Schiit Modi 2 Uber, SINAD did not vary with or without XEME2VE converter.
Conclusions
While my tests are not exhaustive, the Holo Audio XEME2VE seems to be a well implemented USB to S/PDIF converter. At its current sale price, it fetches some premium over cheaper converters which can be had for nearly half its price. The higher look and feel should be enough to justify the small incremental cost anyway.
Given all of this, I can recommend the Holo Audio XEME2VE for a USB to S/PDIF converter for legacy DACs. For new DAC purchases, you should get a unit that has good, native USB support. There is no advantage to having it internal (if anything, it is harder to make an external unit perform well than an internal one).
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
They say you should save money for a rainy day. It rains for about 6 months here so I need plenty of money!!! Please consider donating funds using:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or
upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).