Maximising sound quality from USB

[Jimbo]

Back in the day Kevin I ran a SOTM usb card in my music servers,
sounded better than Motherboard USB out straight out the packet.

It REALLY showed what it was cabable of when I sorted out clean power throughout the PC itself,
the biggest hitter being seperating the 3 power rails and powering them independantly from linear PSUs.
The USB card had its own linear as well, so was running 4 to one PC box!

All else being equal, thats where I'd be looking to improve your PCs sound.
USBs not the best transmission method for digital, something to consider?
To get it to work properly you need to do some work on it, I found fitting a SPDIF output connected from SPDIF motherboard header with silver in teflon cable was better than any of the USB tweaks i tried.

Sound was excellent once I got the power sorted though, kinda why (I guess) Im such a stickler for it in my hifi setup, old habits die hard.

I was going to say concentrate on PSU and mains noise and there are huge gains to be made there in Digital systems, maybe more so than connections , galvanic isolation or USB tweaks although I have heard the Schitt audio USB input implementation does have a big benefit.

I heard one of these in my system the other day and it was simply amazing but also has an amazing price!

https://chord.co.uk/product/poweraray-professional/

[Gazjam]

Thanks Gaz.
I was looking at power, but it seems very expensive to sort out properly, as there seem to be fewer options.
FOr the price of what is available, I think I could get an Innuos Zenith.

Not necessarily mate, in my experience?
Got great results powering my own Server from 4 Maplins CB Radio linear supplies, tweaked down to 12V.
Came in about £50 each?
Hook em up with a halfway decent power cable into the wall and some good DC cable, say the Mogami 12GA stuff I posted about on my gallery thread and your Jammin.

The CPC linear bench supply I recently posted about would be even better than the Maplin supplies, and only £40 each.
Just splice the DC cable from the linear psu to your individual power rail motherboard to connectors and your good to go.

This would go a long way to getting more from your PC setup.

[CageyH]

After a brief investigation, my motherboard does not have a spare SPDIF header.
So I plugged in my Asus Essence STX II to use the SPDIF pass through.
No noticeable difference in sound quality between the SPDIF and USB.

Probably time to draw a line under improving the quality from the PC and look at a dedicated streamer sometime in the future.

[struth]

one of these will improve the usb line sound...not cheap but cheaper than they were.


iFi Audio iPurifier 2 - USB Purifier

I used this when I was using a main system with a pc into dac

[Gazjam]

Change of motherboard (with SPDIF header - direct feed from the MB makes a difference) and sperated linear power rails, you'd get a nice bump for not a big outlay.
You CAN go down the PC audio rabbit hole, trick is to know where to step off!

Loads of forum posts and articles out there, but its a time drain.
Nowadays at my end, even Airplay 2 from the IPAD into the AppleTv sounds great and "more than good enough"...

After a brief investigation, my motherboard does not have a spare SPDIF header.
So I plugged in my Asus Essence STX II to use the SPDIF pass through.
No noticeable difference in sound quality between the SPDIF and USB.

Probably time to draw a line under improving the quality from the PC and look at a dedicated streamer sometime in the future.

[CageyH]

Doing a bit of digging, I have come across the Advance Paris WTX Stream Tubes, which looks tempting.
Are there any other streamers that have a tube output stage?

[CageyH]

Would a digital transport like a Digione/RPI be worth looking at?
Or is it likely to be different, rather than better?

[struth]

i had one of those... still have it i think too. was very good at time i used it. i went off the rpi usage tho when programs started costing...

[CageyH]

Same for me, it has to be free to use.

[CageyH]

So listening to FLAC files stored on my music server, it sounds pretty good.
Streaming the audio direct from Amazon HD sounds less good. Is this just the problem with internet streaming?
It sounds richer/fuller from the local files. I use Amazon as it gives me a cheaper family subscription, and this is not something I really want to change.