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Post by kcatthedog on Jun 6, 2018 4:49:05 GMT -6
So, you can send the DAW stereo signal to the s2 on usb and then just hook monitors up to the s2 off its rca outs ?
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Post by kcatthedog on Jun 6, 2018 4:51:48 GMT -6
My Symphony mkii has ESS Sabre32 32-bit Hyperstream DAC, is the chip in the S2 the next gen and better ?
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Post by jin167 on Jun 6, 2018 5:17:46 GMT -6
tempting... I wonder how it would fare against grace m905.
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Post by jeromemason on Jun 6, 2018 12:48:42 GMT -6
My Symphony mkii has ESS Sabre32 32-bit Hyperstream DAC, is the chip in the S2 the next gen and better ? Doesn't have the 9038's Pretty sure it has the 9016's or 9018's Even if it did have the 9038's the way the chips were set up would be a big difference. The way the S2 does it is by having mono blocks of the left and right channels..... It's like putting a Bugatti Engine in a Ford Fiesta......
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Post by bram on Jun 6, 2018 13:42:12 GMT -6
Thanks for the update Jerome. I recently signed up for Tidal as well to use for the Master Quality 96/24 files as reference tracks for clients. They're already sounding fantastic, I'm really curious how much of a difference I'll notice with an upgraded DAC.
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Post by svart on Jun 6, 2018 13:45:31 GMT -6
My Symphony mkii has ESS Sabre32 32-bit Hyperstream DAC, is the chip in the S2 the next gen and better ? Doesn't have the 9038's Pretty sure it has the 9016's or 9018's Even if it did have the 9038's the way the chips were set up would be a big difference. The way the S2 does it is by having mono blocks of the left and right channels..... It's like putting a Bugatti Engine in a Ford Fiesta...... From my analysis of the difference between the PCM1794A in single stereo and dual mono mode, the difference is going to be small, more like the difference between the 300HP V6 and the 400HP V8 choices in something like a mustang. Yes, you get a bit more power and all that, but you're still going to compress and mix for like 20dB of dynamic range anyway, so you've wasted most of the difference..
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Post by dankin on Jun 6, 2018 13:45:54 GMT -6
I would need to go out AES into it from my Apollo 16MkII. I'm seeing cables that go from AES to Coax SPDIF. Is that all I would need? Very tempted to try one of these.
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Post by jeromemason on Jun 6, 2018 14:04:07 GMT -6
Doesn't have the 9038's Pretty sure it has the 9016's or 9018's Even if it did have the 9038's the way the chips were set up would be a big difference. The way the S2 does it is by having mono blocks of the left and right channels..... It's like putting a Bugatti Engine in a Ford Fiesta...... From my analysis of the difference between the PCM1794A in single stereo and dual mono mode, the difference is going to be small, more like the difference between the 300HP V6 and the 400HP V8 choices in something like a mustang. Yes, you get a bit more power and all that, but you're still going to compress and mix for like 20dB of dynamic range anyway, so you've wasted most of the difference.. Well, I just know what I'm hearing. The difference here is like putting a V12 in a Fiesta...... The transient detail on the L/R are totally spot on and precise, I can actually hear the modulation of the tails of reverbs that the software is doing and my panning detail is much much more precise. If I pan even the slightest bit I can hear it. I was listening to a few MQA tracks last night that I'm extremely knowledgeable on, know those mixes inside and out from hearing them so many times, and in one of them it was the first time I could notice the snare was panned over to the left by probably 3-4, just barely off center and the kick was opposite to the right by about the same, the vocal right up the middle. That's pretty insane detail. Also what got me all giddy was hearing a full 3D soundstage. It wasn't that things were just panned 45> to the right and pushed back some, I could also get a sense of vertical movement. Now, whether or not the mixing engineer was hearing that when he did it, or if that is just how the S2 is detailing the audio, I don't know, but it does make it 10x faster regarding eq'ing/filtering/space judgments when mixing. When I find out what makes the vertical thing happen it'll allow me to place things in my mix extremely quickly, and create presets for doing that. I've got to do a lot of listening and then playing around with mixes to understand what makes that happen for me, in my room, in my setup. Of course YMMV and the S2 may not do ALL these things for you depending on your listening space etc. But, what is for sure is when I flip to the Motu 16a's inputs on the Satori all of that sense of space, detail, transient etc. is gone. So it's most certainly the S2 and however they've designed the mono blocks for the L/R, they've done it so well it will change how you mix, in a good way and more efficient way. Anything I can do to speed up and be more precise makes my clients happy.
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Post by jeromemason on Jun 6, 2018 14:09:27 GMT -6
I would need to go out AES into it from my Apollo 16MkII. I'm seeing cables that go from AES to Coax SPDIF. Is that all I would need? Very tempted to try one of these. Spdif is usually a 75ohm digital cable, If the Apollo will send Spidf over the AES output an XLR to RCA with something like Mogami's W2964 is a good one and what I use for W/C and Spdif cables I build.
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Post by kcatthedog on Jun 6, 2018 15:32:21 GMT -6
I have no doubt the s2 sounds fine, but, by the time I get one to Canada it will be like $700 plus Canadian. So, not exactly an impromptu decision !
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Post by Martin John Butler on Jun 6, 2018 15:51:30 GMT -6
I've often heard it said that the internal converter is ALWAYS better than an external DAC. Yet when I tried the Svartbox for a week, and briefly demoed the BLA Audio MKIII, I heard what I would call improvements, especially in the soundstage and depth perception.
So, let's say instead of the BLA III I bought the ProJect, how would I connect it to my Apollo? I'm wary of RCA connections. (I'm tight for time today and haven't read all the above.)
Would any adapters negatively affect the sound quality?
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Jun 6, 2018 15:55:25 GMT -6
I have no doubt the s2 sounds fine, but, by the time I get one to Canada it will be like $700 plus Canadian. So, not exactly an impromptu decision ! They have a Canadian distributor Gentec International give them a shout might be cheaper.
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Post by kcatthedog on Jun 6, 2018 16:04:39 GMT -6
Thx I’ll check that out. You know we all get to that point of diminishing returns once you get your system where you like it?
I am pretty happy with the symphony mkii, but it would be great to demo the s2?
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Post by jeromemason on Jun 6, 2018 16:13:51 GMT -6
I've often heard it said that the internal converter is ALWAYS better than an external DAC. Yet when I tried the Svartbox for a week, and briefly demoed the BLA Audio MKIII, I heard what I would call improvements, especially in the soundstage and depth perception. So, let's say instead of the BLA III I bought the ProJect, how would I connect it to my Apollo? I'm wary of RCA connections. (I'm tight for time today and haven't read all the above.) Would any adapters negatively affect the sound quality? Well, I have the BLA MKIII and I posted above that when I'm listening to playback from the computer, as long as it's not MQA and it's at like 96K, the sound of the S2 when being fed from my Motu via lightpipe and the Motu referencing the clock from the MKIII I heard a lot of improvement and it just sounded much more solid and tight vs. being fed by the USB. The USB can bad effects on Jitter, and they make little in between filters you can buy that bring that down quite a bit, but still, the BLA clock is still what you're going to want the S2 referencing. The S2 likely upsamples the DAC, but the steadier the reference, the better the reference, the better the upsample and the better it sounds. If your Apollo has Optical lightpipe then go that route. I use Lightpipe for both feeding my DAC and also sending from my A/D and I've always liked it better. I do use glass cables instead of plastic type. They're not cheap and you have to be careful not to break them, but if you're in the studio, not in mobile use it's not something you should be worrying about anyways. A good glass optical cable gives a solid and stable signal.
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Post by kcatthedog on Jun 6, 2018 19:28:52 GMT -6
The apollo has spdif and adat light pipe and as it also has a software setting for spdif to mirror output, most use that to send 2 channel digital?
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Post by svart on Jun 6, 2018 19:37:53 GMT -6
Re: glass vs. plastic..
The recievers clock bits on edges. Glass does no better than optical grade plastic on edge jitter.
The only difference is loss due to imperfections over distance, of which either one could do worse than the other if it's a worse grade than the other.
However, coax all has better transmission fidelity over short distances due to the impedance matching, but worse over long distances due to the material parasitic loses.
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Post by bram on Jun 6, 2018 19:40:09 GMT -6
The apollo has spdif and adat light pipe and as it also has a software setting for spdif to mirror output, most use that to send 2 channel digital? Yep, that's what I do. Digital Mirror on, Apollo SPDIF Out-> External Box SPDIF In
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jun 6, 2018 20:43:03 GMT -6
Re: glass vs. plastic.. The recievers clock bits on edges. Glass does no better than optical grade plastic on edge jitter. The only difference is loss due to imperfections over distance, of which either one could do worse than the other if it's a worse grade than the other. However, coax all has better transmission fidelity over short distances due to the impedance matching, but worse over long distances due to the material parasitic loses. Glass works better with glass transmitters and receivers, plastic better with plastic, trying to get a manufacturer to tell you what they use, impossible! In the old days when Alesis made chips and All the light pipe transmitters and receivers if it did lightpipe it was plastic.
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Post by jeromemason on Jun 6, 2018 21:43:45 GMT -6
I've often heard it said that the internal converter is ALWAYS better than an external DAC. Yet when I tried the Svartbox for a week, and briefly demoed the BLA Audio MKIII, I heard what I would call improvements, especially in the soundstage and depth perception. So, let's say instead of the BLA III I bought the ProJect, how would I connect it to my Apollo? I'm wary of RCA connections. (I'm tight for time today and haven't read all the above.) Would any adapters negatively affect the sound quality? These are some good ones www.lifatec.com/toslink2.html
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Post by Martin John Butler on Jun 6, 2018 21:54:13 GMT -6
Thanks Jerome.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Jun 6, 2018 22:02:16 GMT -6
Anyone here actually used one with a blackface Apollo?
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Post by bram on Jun 6, 2018 23:20:02 GMT -6
Anyone here actually used one with a blackface Apollo? The glass cables or the S2?
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Post by kcatthedog on Jun 7, 2018 4:43:04 GMT -6
Anyone here actually used one with a blackface Apollo? Nope, but it wound be like hooking up the apollo to a dangerous dbox. You are essentially replacing the apollo DA with the substitute and driving your monitors with that improved signal. You could also record that signal;, yes, back through the apollo converters but I could hear an improvement with my first apollo, so it would be a print track of the s2 but bet it would also sound more linear and detailed, than the stock apollo 2 bus sound.
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Post by svart on Jun 7, 2018 6:32:35 GMT -6
Re: glass vs. plastic.. The recievers clock bits on edges. Glass does no better than optical grade plastic on edge jitter. The only difference is loss due to imperfections over distance, of which either one could do worse than the other if it's a worse grade than the other. However, coax all has better transmission fidelity over short distances due to the impedance matching, but worse over long distances due to the material parasitic loses. Glass works better with glass transmitters and receivers, plastic better with plastic, trying to get a manufacturer to tell you what they use, impossible! In the old days when Alesis made chips and All the light pipe transmitters and receivers if it did lightpipe it was plastic. When I was working on 2.5G SDH optical jitter measurement design, I found that the fiber material didn't matter much at all. I used both glass and plastic multimode fiber that was designed for 40G+.. Whether you have feet or miles of fiber, the SINGLE most important thing is the termination polish. We had a special tool to polish the termination every time we needed to install a fiber into a transceiver. If you have even the slightest dust, finger print or skin oils, or the polish job was so-so, that could hamper your transmission characteristics by causing things like diffraction and reflection. So while the medium itself might not affect jitter or signal strength even at 2.5Gb/s, a cheap cable might have a very poor end polish and could lead to a litany of issues. Now, for something as slow as SPDIF and such loose tolerances as those TOSLINK LED based Tx/Rx ports, I 100% doubt it's an issue, but on the 1$ plastic cables I use, I make sure to clean the ends really good!
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Jun 7, 2018 6:58:54 GMT -6
Glass works better with glass transmitters and receivers, plastic better with plastic, trying to get a manufacturer to tell you what they use, impossible! In the old days when Alesis made chips and All the light pipe transmitters and receivers if it did lightpipe it was plastic. When I was working on 2.5G SDH optical jitter measurement design, I found that the fiber material didn't matter much at all. I used both glass and plastic multimode fiber that was designed for 40G+.. Whether you have feet or miles of fiber, the SINGLE most important thing is the termination polish. We had a special tool to polish the termination every time we needed to install a fiber into a transceiver. If you have even the slightest dust, finger print or skin oils, or the polish job was so-so, that could hamper your transmission characteristics by causing things like diffraction and reflection. So while the medium itself might not affect jitter or signal strength even at 2.5Gb/s, a cheap cable might have a very poor end polish and could lead to a litany of issues. Now, for something as slow as SPDIF and such loose tolerances as those TOSLINK LED based Tx/Rx ports, I 100% doubt it's an issue, but on the 1$ plastic cables I use, I make sure to clean the ends really good! Chris While your tests are measurement based mine are based on using and interfacing final product, I don’t know how many guys bought expensive glass cables to intergrate ADATs only to find those cheap plastic meant less drop outs. It was actually a manufacturer of optical cable as well as a Siemens Telco Engineer who explained that transmitters receivers designed with plastic were problematic with glass and vice versa. This was part of why a lot of the highend consumer guys had problems with and hate SPDIF optical, Glass has to better than plastic right? Well if the other end is plastic no ! Also keep in mind with old light pipe, like everything ADAT it was the cheapest part available ( the ADAT only exists because JVC had a couple of Wharehouses full of crappy SVHS transports they couldn’t give away to video companies) so I’m sure nobody even tested them with good glass.
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