Caiman optical vs usb

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Originally Posted by Clive

OK, my turn for Foobar and ASIO4ALL help. I've been running 16/44.1 on XP with this s/w for ages. I'm now trying to play 24/96 but I'm having trouble with the config. I have 2 codecs available:

USB Audio CODEC - seems to max out at 16/48

RealTek HD Audio - has 8 channels, I configured the 1st 2 to L & R, the sound came out of the computer speaker, not DAC, and it was missing data (probably those other 6 channels).

Any advice on what to do next.....this must be a common thing to set up.

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If you select RealTek HD Audio you're just sending it back to the onboard soundcard, and hence the computer speakers. :)

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Originally Posted by Krisbee

Clive,

As you've discovered the USB input on Stan's TC-7520 is limited to 16bit. So you'll have to use optical out from your PC to the DAC. Either it's inbuilt on the m/board or it means forking out for a 24/96Khz capable soundcard with digital out.

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That's why I have in order the musiland monitor 01; with this little box I can skip the caiman usb limit, and depart from usb jitter issues

Right now, while waiting for delivery, when I want to listen HD tracks, I just enable the resampler embedded in foobar to downsample from 96 to 48; you can find under Playback/DSP in foobar preference

Well, after properly set foobar on wasapi output, I can say I have no more complains about flac quality, and some flac actually sounds LOT BETTER than the corresponding burned CD

I'm very very happy :cool:

I have been playing even 192KHz files via the PC and the USB output to the Caiman. I use Media Monkey and never had to do any sort of adjustment to get them to play.
I am surprised you have to do that in Foobar.

Hi Stan, I think what's happening with my Foobar on XP is that ASIO4ALL is detecting what the USB chip can do in the 7520 - it this likely?

I could down sample my 24/96 track but's it's just one track so I'm not really bothered.

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Originally Posted by Clive

Hi Stan, I think what's happening with my Foobar on XP is that ASIO4ALL is detecting what the USB chip can do in the 7520 - it this likely?

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It's possible. I have been trying to get some specific info from Texas Instruments, but I get the feeling that I know a lot more about their chip than their their support team does.

Stan, reading at the specs for 2902, the maximum resolution accepted is 16/48

If you use foobar or any else player with no ASIO or WASAPI, windows automatically resample every data stream to the maximum allowed

Me too was able to play everything with no problem, but with ASIO or wasapi it's a different story

While they improve considerably the sound quality bypassing windows mixer and sending a bit perfect stream to the usb, they don't apply any automatic downsample if you try to play a track that exceed receiver capability, and simply give you a message error

any updates on the USB port development?

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Originally Posted by WAD62

Interesting quote from the site..

"Convert it to FLAC using the highest quality setting"

...one assumes the author means 'highest compression', not 'highest quality' as FLAC is always lossless. ;)

This could as easily be seen as a test of ripping software, cd drives, etc, as there are conflicting results...too many variables!

There is most definitely a difference between a CD and a bad FLAC rip version of it, additionally the use of the highest compression levels is inadvisable as it can place too much load on playback for some devices. :)

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So if there can be problems with ripping to FLAC, why bother?

Storage space is so cheap as to just keep everything as WAV surely?

I mean, I find BT Vision boxes thrown away with now 320Gb drives in them.. put them in a cheap raid. Storage is virtually free.

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Originally Posted by nat8808

So if there can be problems with ripping to FLAC, why bother?

Storage space is so cheap as to just keep everything as WAV surely?

I mean, I find BT Vision boxes thrown away with now 320Gb drives in them.. put them in a cheap raid. Storage is virtually free.

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It's all contextual Nat....
Flac is decoded by the player on the fly, so it is not the format which is the issue but hardware or software. It is not a widespread problem, in fact very limited, as you will find in previous threads.

Storage space is NO LONGER the issue it once was. Given you have no issues with playback of FLAC, why change back to WAV?

Once prices drop again for big SATAs, I will be able to hot swap the 2Tb backup instead of using the usb 1.5Tb. The extra storage needed for WAV may not be massive, but it all takes time to back up, especially on a stack of RAIDed 320s.

I don't backup, I copy new rips to 3 drives. No backup required. WAVs somehow seem better nowadays unless you wirelessly stream; just the same as doublespace is unnecessary nowadays.