I just wanted to point something out:
Some people complain about the internal realtek 32/384khz USB-Decoder as being cheap and inferior to the Xmos USB-Chips with native 512DSD Decoding and 32/768khz. People in this thread even said, that they connected another pure USB-DAC with Xmos and plugged to RCA ins of the SA300 to achieve superior sound quality over the internal one. I believe this can't be true.
As I understand it, the sole purpose of a USB-Chip is to grab digital information (bits 0,1) off a USB port and to deliver it over a short circuit on the pcb to the AMP/DAC-Chip (Infineon MA12070, AKM4793 ect.) where it gets all rearranged in order to be converted to a analogue RCA signal to send to the speakers. The USB-Chip therefore has no actual need to really do anything special with the digital bits taken from the USB plug, since it stays digital on its way to the MA12070 and there shouldn't be any loss with sending digital information. All it does in theory is to supply a bandwith of plugins for the USB connector to be compatible with a as many devices and OS-Systems as possible without creating transmission failures. The Xmos chips do the same, but in addition add a native driver support for DSD codec streaming. The realtek "only" does PCM (the highest possible).
Is there a hearable difference between PCM 32/384 and 32/768/DSD256/DSD 512? -> I really believe not. Maybe on 9000$ speakers for 12 year olds with perfect ears. But 12 year olds don't care about HiFi equipment, they are perfectly satisfied with the sound the speakers of a gameboy make.
So why some do claim it sounds better with a Xmos-USB-DAC running in front of it?
->It may be because they did not set it up in windows properly. By default "windows session audio" is activated in the control panel with only 24/44khz which is the default setting for most compability with players, itunes ect. You have to set it to 32/384khz yourself manually in order to achive full potential. People who connect an aditional Xmos-DAC usually install explicit DSD-drivers for that device and are being guided to do so. Hence they don't have to set up the correct levels in windows settings. With that being said, I believe the AMP can achieve similar results to those AKM/Xmos DACs and a lot of people are probably running it under its potential without knowing it.
Some people complain about the internal realtek 32/384khz USB-Decoder as being cheap and inferior to the Xmos USB-Chips with native 512DSD Decoding and 32/768khz. People in this thread even said, that they connected another pure USB-DAC with Xmos and plugged to RCA ins of the SA300 to achieve superior sound quality over the internal one. I believe this can't be true.
As I understand it, the sole purpose of a USB-Chip is to grab digital information (bits 0,1) off a USB port and to deliver it over a short circuit on the pcb to the AMP/DAC-Chip (Infineon MA12070, AKM4793 ect.) where it gets all rearranged in order to be converted to a analogue RCA signal to send to the speakers. The USB-Chip therefore has no actual need to really do anything special with the digital bits taken from the USB plug, since it stays digital on its way to the MA12070 and there shouldn't be any loss with sending digital information. All it does in theory is to supply a bandwith of plugins for the USB connector to be compatible with a as many devices and OS-Systems as possible without creating transmission failures. The Xmos chips do the same, but in addition add a native driver support for DSD codec streaming. The realtek "only" does PCM (the highest possible).
Is there a hearable difference between PCM 32/384 and 32/768/DSD256/DSD 512? -> I really believe not. Maybe on 9000$ speakers for 12 year olds with perfect ears. But 12 year olds don't care about HiFi equipment, they are perfectly satisfied with the sound the speakers of a gameboy make.
So why some do claim it sounds better with a Xmos-USB-DAC running in front of it?
->It may be because they did not set it up in windows properly. By default "windows session audio" is activated in the control panel with only 24/44khz which is the default setting for most compability with players, itunes ect. You have to set it to 32/384khz yourself manually in order to achive full potential. People who connect an aditional Xmos-DAC usually install explicit DSD-drivers for that device and are being guided to do so. Hence they don't have to set up the correct levels in windows settings. With that being said, I believe the AMP can achieve similar results to those AKM/Xmos DACs and a lot of people are probably running it under its potential without knowing it.
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