Digital signal quality

[pgarrish]

I have a CD Transport, SBT, Chromecast and my TV all connected to the same DAC. The SBT and CD are via Coax and the Chromecast and TV via Optical. Has anyone done any measurements on the feed each might be giving to my DAC to see if there is any difference, given the same source? I've currently got Spotify from a ROKU media box, via HDMI into the TV and then via TOSLINK to the DAC..... It (unsurprisingly) sounds remarkably similar to the same track from any other source, although I do think the CDT is slightly better than rips via the SBT or Chromecast.

The big advantage of playing via the TV is just that - BIG text that I can read without using the phone, or squinting at the SBT display.

[Stratmangler]

You don't say anything about your rips.
How were the files ripped, which software, which file type, etc?

[Sherwood]

I have a pretty good cd player but I find that my flac rips sound consistently better than the cd originals through the same DACs

Geoff

[JimC]

I would think they will sound different.

To me, Coaxial sounds better than Optical. On the tests I've done with older CD Players I found Japanese Based Players' Coax sounded better than European (Philips) based Coax. When 'scoped I found this to be because the Japanese Players in general outputted a cleaner, more Square Digital signal whereas there always seemed to be a lot of 'ringing' on the Philips based signal.

It's all subjective of course though, a colleague at the time preferred the Philips approach.

Jim

[Stratmangler]

The Squeezebox Touch does need a few things doing do it.

The supplied PSU is a horrible thing. At the very least you should hang a SBooster filter off the supplied PSU, as that will kill a lot of the high frequency switching noise the PSU generates.
A decent linear PSU lifts the performance considerably, and gets around the switching noise issue by not creating any switching noise in the first place.

Installing EDO (enhanced digital output) on the player also helps, because without EDO all outputs are on - with EDO installed you can turn off the analogue outputs.

And last, but not least, a SPDIF cable that conforms to spec helps.

[pgarrish]

So my rips are apple lossless via iTunes. I have EDO enabled on the sbt. Same ic's between sbt and dac and CD and dac.

A bit more time via the TV and it's noticeably flat compared to the other sources.

[Stratmangler]

iTunes doesn't do secure rips.
Last time I looked the Touch didn't play ALAC natively either, but LMS did do a transcode on the fly to FLAC which can be played natively.

[pgarrish]

If I read that site correctly (and a link) then with LMS running, the SBT will play ALAC natively, it just can't act as a server with 24bit ALAC files.

When you say secure rips, do you mean checking them against a database a-la DBPoweramp or similar?