Caiman optical vs usb

[robyonekenoby]

Yesterday I made a A/B comparison between the two input with the help of my wife to avoid any subjective influence

Same song, Barbr Jung from Linn Records, 16/44

on the usb input I have a flac played by foobar
on the toslink input a burned CD played by an Onkyo DVD player

Well, I did expect to find the CD a loosy support, but it's a matter of fact, the CD sound (slighly) better; my wife and me agreed the most noticeably difference was surprisingly not on the highs, but on the bass definition

from the usb it was slightly blurred and rounded compared to the CD

Now I wanna try to play a WAV instead of a flac (I red somewhere it could make difference)

[StanleyB]

I have mentioned before that I find that FLAC is not as lossless as most people assume. I mentioned long time ago that a direct A/B test between a FLAC, WAV, and APE file shows that the FLAC file has less bass. Some people suggested it is the ripper/converter I used. I left that suggestion in the dustbin.

Glad to see you also discovered that FLAC has less bass. But it is not my DAC that is causing that. Try the same test between WAV on USB and WAV on TOSLINK. They are the same. It is only with FLAC files played through a DAC like mine with excellent bass definition that you can pick up the difference. On lesser DACs with poorer bass response you won't notice it.

[Tony Moore]

Hi,

If you take a WAV and convert it to FLAC, then convert the FLAC file back to WAV and do a bit-for-bit file comparison the two match. That's lossless. No information has been lost. You can re-create the original file. (Obviously here that's not looking at time-related information since the timing is handled by the replay mechanism)

Now, whether or not FLAC replay SOUNDS the same as WAV replay is another matter. That would be down to the processing that has to happen to decompress the FLAC file on the fly. In the case of the SqueezeBox I cannot tell the slightest difference between a FLAC and a WAV replayed at 44/16 so I'm happy with the implementation in the SB. I can't vouch for any windows based software though.

To me the fuzzy bass sounds like a higher degree of timing errors.

Tony

[robyonekenoby]

Yes Tony,

I was thinking about a timing problem, and I point out to computer generated jitter; the caiman has a synchronous USB input, and rely to the clock contained in the usb stream

That's why I have in order a better transport, an asynchronous USB to spdif converter, with a better clock, the musiland monitor 01 USD

This little toy allow me to play also 24/96 via usb

[robyonekenoby]

Just tried same track: flac vs wav vs CD

Well, wav is better than flac, but CD player always win

More defined, more clarity, stronger (I mean not louder) bass

Hope the musiland will fill the gap

[magiccarpetride]

I have mentioned before that I find that FLAC is not as lossless as most people assume. I mentioned long time ago that a direct A/B test between a FLAC, WAV, and APE file shows that the FLAC file has less bass. Some people suggested it is the ripper/converter I used. I left that suggestion in the dustbin.

Glad to see you also discovered that FLAC has less bass. But it is not my DAC that is causing that. Try the same test between WAV on USB and WAV on TOSLINK. They are the same. It is only with FLAC files played through a DAC like mine with excellent bass definition that you can pick up the difference. On lesser DACs with poorer bass response you won't notice it.

I hear noticeable difference between FLAC and WAV/AIFF when played through my Touch into Caiman.

However, if I disable FLAC encoding on the Touch, and configure the Squeezebox server on my iMac to convert FLAC to PCM before sending it to the Touch, the differences disappear. In other words, FLAC sounds identical to the same track in WAV.

Conclusion? Always leave heavy lifting (i.e. transcoding from one format to another format) to the most powerful processing plant in your house. In this case, beefy iMac is the champ, while tiny Touch, with its tiny CPU and small main memory, should not be tasked with ANY heavy lifting.

[robyonekenoby]

Processing capability could be one of the reason, anyway I'm feeding the caiman usb with a notebook, CPU dual core 1.7 Ghz 2Gb RAM

Not exactly a poor processing capability, but WAV is still inferior to the CD player

Note the WAV and the burned CD have been created from the same flac I bought from Linn Records

Yes, the burned CD is superior to its own source file

So I tend to point out to jitter problem in the USB stream, probably the CD player (good quality Onkyo) has a better clock than usb interface

The musiland monitor receive data from USB asynchronously and recreate the s/pdif flow with its own internal clock generator, and from what I heard is a good quality clock

I will connect the caiman to the musiland toslink output, in this way I can also have galvanic insulation from the PC

[Clive]

Roberto, is the notebook running software set up to be so-called "bit perfect" such as ASIO4ALL or whatever you need for your OS and player?

There are so many variables with computers that jitter is highly likely for all sorts of reasons. However I sold my Meridian 588 because my PC sounded better that the CDP.

[robyonekenoby]

Hi Clive,

your statement is very encouraging

well, while I'm a pretty experienced diyer in audio electronics and working as a software engineer, I'm absolutely a newbie in computer audio

I'm starting right now after buying the caiman, and my idea is storing all my flacs in a PC; the main reason behind this is the capability to play the long awaited HD music in 24/96

Now there are many album available in this format, especially classical, so it's time to move

So, right now I've just installed foobar 2000 and disabled all the gain and equalizer options; do you mean I need something else to be sure the data streamed via USB is absolutely equal to the one coming from a CD player ?

[Clive]

Hi Roberto,

As you are using Foobar you are part way there already. It needs some help to avoid windows software which automatically re-samples / up-samples audio. For XP this is ASIO4ALL, for 7 it's WASAPI, There's loads to be found on this if you google it.

There's still potential for jitter so try different USB ports too, it they are spread around your notebook they may sound different due to their position and the wiring in between them. Some of the USB to SPDIF converters do a good job too, eg M2 Tech Hi-Face.