Hello from the Netherlands, thank you Sir for some good advice! I bought myself a DAC (Cambridge Audio DacMAgic 100) and installed Audirvana. Sounds a lot better than before!
I use optical fiber to isolate my server from the network switch feeding a low powered sbc like the allo usbridge signature. This connects to my hugo2 dac via its clean USB output.
I am using ifi micro iUSB3.0 with ifi Gemini cable and it sounds FANTASTIC! The galvanic isolation is achieved in a way that the data head of the Gemini cable is connected to the PC, and the power head to the iUSB3.0
Fortunately most digital switching noise starts in MHz range and goes on up from there. It's all about careful PCB design. The ADC/DAC PCB design should have dedicated/filtered converter power supply and ground planes (that act like a giant free filter cap ) and also make sure the digital data to/from the converters have their own path back to their digital grounds.
I use HDMI from my PC using JRiver Media Center for audio through a NAD M51 DAC and it sounds incredible. I wish more DAC's included the HDMI inputs. I tried USB and I didn't like it at all
I use Jriver too, has ripped most of my library and some hi-rez. I use iFI DAC and Supra 3m usb with shielded volt.. I like the sound quality and I'm happy with Jriver who sort my music and adds coverart.
I do the same, using the HDMI port to feed my Denon AVR-3808 which then powers Tannoy Revolution R2 and mXC centre channel, HTS200 rear and dual TFX subwoofers all Tannoy and I get really good and clean sound, I can see the difference between my previous USB external DAC when compared to current setup.
Thank you for this video! I just started a free trial with Audirvana. Question: How can I get the volume control to work in the Audirvana panel/interface? Right now my computer (win10) volume and my Audirvana volume do not change the volume. As a result, I am forced to put a preamp in my signal chain (Denefrips Iris>Aers II>power amp) to control volume (otherwise it is extremely loud). Thanks in advance for any help and/or suggestions!
I have a Synology NAS device that stores all my music in FLAC format. It’s connected to a Netgear router via Cat 5 Ethernet cable. The router is connected via Cat 5 to an ELAC Discovery music server which is connected via SPDIF to an Enlightened Audio Designs DSP 7000 DAC (still a honey after all these years). It sounds quite good. Any thoughts on how I could clean up the signal for even better sound? Would upgrading to Cat 6 or Cat 7 be worth the effort?
I use a Mac mini as both a Roon server and an endpoint connected to my Dacmagic 200M with an Audioquest Jitterbug in between the Mac and the dac. Do you think that setup is good enough to filter out most of the noise? Also is use Roon a good enough product to bypass macOS’ resampling?
@@dwmb484 I almost exclusively listen to my purchased digital library (primarily DSD) and Roon is so much better than Audirvana.. Not just with organising the library but how it works with zones and multiple devices at the same time, too. But I would say that I have not heard any noise whatsoever with either my M1 Air (100% solid state, no moving parts) nor my M1 mini (it has a fan, but it's only used when editing). Even if the music's paused it's impossible to hear any noise, provided I have either of my DACs are connected. Of course it will also depend on the recording, which people seem to forget..
Most competent DACs will use switching regulators to regenerate the voltage supplies internally to isolate themselves from the USB bus, so for digital stuff like that its usually not a problem as it will have its own private supply with generous filtering to keep the USB noise out of the DAC. But for analog stuff its a different story. I remember when I first tested an amplifier I was quite pleased that it only had a few mv of ripple on the output despite using an electronic supply. The sine and square waves were nice and clean, and then I hooked it to the PC. Even with input filtering there was something like 5-6 VOLTS P-P of just noise from the PC's soundcard. Adjusting the gain and levels brought it down to something more reasonable, but still has so much noise you can't even see the audio waveform at listening levels of around 65-70 dB. Of course the issue being that the outputs on a soundcard are quite anemic so to drive speakers means you need plenty of gain, and that means the noise gets amplified as well.
I have experience this issue recently - it seems even with a USB 3.0 connection and having an external audio interface, it still generate noise over the main outputs. My solution to this in previous instances has been to run the computer (assuming laptop) via battery. There is zero noise when we tried that in the same environment, with the same outboard setup. The only obvious gotcha there is battery life. The issue now is I've upgraded the computer to an all in one - mainly because you can get a desktop CPU and therefore more number crunching speed without (as serious) concerns as temperature bottle necks. I'm looking to make a split cable that will provide connection to an external power source and allow the data connection to and from the computer. The other option is to isolate the computer power and have a cleaner supply - such as a UPS to provide a cleaner power source
The operating system does not generate noise. Albeit, the operating system can trigger noise, if the operating system is busy with all manner of crap that is unrelated to feeding the DAC data, causing the CPU to heat up and fans to speed up, etc. Ideally, you would not want the fan to turn on -- and it should not have to, if the computer's only job is to feed data to a DAC. Noise is generated via the hardware -- not the operating system. The Innuos Statement transport uses a quad-core Pentium computer, chosen for its low noise. I am not sure which version of the Pentium CPU is used. And there are many other noise design features of the motherboard, case, power supply, etc, that makes that computer deliver an amazingly quiet and accurate data stream to your DAC. And you will mortgage your home to own that transport. And it runs a Linux kernel (not sure which one), but I am assuming that they did not want to deal with Windows' bloat, or licensing costs, when Linux is free and open source. Cheers!
Your completely discounting a weak power supply. Bad caps, add noise to everything, and is the main cause of Power supply failures. Even the mother board capacitors can bulge and work, but be very noisy. You can hear a mouse move across the screen. Always check all the used equipment for bad caps (filters).
@@Eye_of_state And you are completely discounting that different kind of mainboards and computer exists (like Macs, Mac Minis, and for instance the Asus ROG boards with special audio output stages).
Just curious: Do you think the Gaia helps a lot? And does it help to both use an isolator AND a DDC? (is the isolator still doing anything useful, is what i'm trying to ask)
Since I do Pro Audio (play guitar and such). I Used to have a Mackie Onyx 820i hocked up to my PC over Firewire. When using usb I had ground loops like crazy, but with Firewire, no more ground loops. One sugestion would be to build a computer with optical out and use the optical since it's isolated also. For my Office I use RME Babyface Pro over USD and it works well.
You can try digital coax from your computer to your dac with a galvanic isolator. Have heard someone suggest it. Is your dac close to your computer, then use optical light cable. usb transmits 5v power with comtuter noise and digital coax is connected to GND in the computer and can transmit noise and you get GND loop. optical provides the cleanest signal.
Schiit Eitr converts the USB to spdif and basically solves this issue. They don't make it any more and it now sells for above cost on ebay because people like it so much.
2:22 Uhm yes there is Paul - optical S/PDIF - it's an old but gold standard and still extremely useful. Wish it would get a proper revision though, with much more bandwidth for high rate DSD & PCM.
@@edfort5704 mmm... not sure about that, in fact, the jitter goes higher when you use higher samplerates over toslink. Don't get me wrong, I love toslink but It has its problems, a toslink 2.0 would be fantastic. Unfortunatelly awful USB was adopted as the standard for audio.
I'm currently using a Surface Pro 7+ with a Chord Mojo 2 and sometimes an iFi iDSD Signature, both with Sennheiser HD650. Would you say my set up is a noisy one, even when the tablet's fan is on? Also I listen to music on foobar with asio bit perfect and CZcams with Windows mixer, mostly CZcams because music sounds better and clearer than on bit perfect foobar, why is this happening??
USB sends digital audio information, so it shouldn't be affected by noise (except in the most extreme cases), right? The problem is that through the USB connection the converted analogue signal is being affected by the digital signal and voltage from the connection itself?
I use Roon streaming with BluOs to my Main Audio system that works fine.However my desktop system needs a USB to feed my Mojo DAC I first orderd a USB cable Audio quest and see if that improves the sound or less noise next step would be a USB noisr isolater if needed .
Hi, Paul. I use three AudioQuest Jitterbugs between my Windows 10 based laptop and the DAC (one to the USB port in series with the SSD that contains all the files, one in the otherwise empty USB port beside the one already mentioned and the third in series with the DAC) . I think they are excellent. I have no issues with noise, with very low level sounds easily heard either by themselves or in the presence of other, louder music. I have a second system where I have exactly the same configuration, although it isn't quite as resolving as the other system.
Best method to make PCs noise free is get one with an optical out, (to the DAC). There are cheap add-in cards that do just that, which are very reasonably priced. No need to buy a highly equipped sound card with a variety of ports just to get optical from it. (Or you buy a motherboard with optical on it.) However I ran the Audioquest Jitterbug for USB and I found it worked well. Am still flumoxed to hear any difference between optical and Jitterbug with USB.
wow I'm glad I found this. Turns out my motherboard had S/PDIF Out header, so I simply needed to buy the connector slot addin. The only thing left to do is get a cheap DAC just to get signal to the speakers. All I care about is to get rid of interference.
So is the noise from the pc radiating out and going into near by cables or is the noise internal and going out through the audio or HDMI cables (in my case cause I use the pc for movies) that are plugged into my AVR?
@Douglas Blake so you're saying the audio and video travelling along the HDMI cable from the PC to my receiver should be unaffected by the noise because the signal in the cable is digital?
There are also the so-called asynchronous DACs which isolate the computer's clock frequency from the DAC's own clock frequency so that they run asynchronously, when a USB-cable is connected between them. It should eliminate jitter, but whether it also eliminates computer noise, I know nothing about.
I don't have much of a dog in the Audiophile fight but my PC throws out a ton of audio garbage. I dunno if it's a limitation of my Focusrite Scarlett (I've tried three generations of this product) but I get some pretty bad coil whine sounds when my GPU is doing anything. I had to get an Ifi iDefender to break the loop. I don't think it's a great idea to have your main PC doing audio playback duties.
@@Harald_Reindl I don't delve too deeply into these issues but jitter is a real phenomenon. I probably couldn't tell in a blind A/B test but it's measurable, and internal PC hardware comes up short most of the time.
I am using usb just to power it and optical for the sound on my dac and it still makes a bunch of static white noise. It is just a pain considering a dac should be able to filter that itself.
Definitely. I always hear this about USB and computers being bad for noise and jitter, but for whatever reason I just don't hear it. I use the USB input on my Luxman CD player as a DAC, and the music that comes out when I use the USB input sounds exactly the same as the music that comes from the CDs it plays.
My GPU was making quite a lot of noise in my sound system, but really only when I was playing games. I put in a PCIe sound card that has optical out, and that completely solved my issue. No need to isolate USB.
Please allow me this kind of related question... (looking at a very expensive Yamaha unit) - - - > Does a 6,000 usd CD player sound equal (or better) than a separate transport + dac?
The actual CD reading is going to be identical between even cheap and extremely high-end units. CD is designed to be about as foolproof as possible, even handling significant disk damage. The difference when it comes to CD audio is everything after that - the DAC, Amplifier and speakers. The built-in DAC and amp with most CD players is total garbage, regardless of the price. You are much better of either: * Ripping them and just playing the digital file with a dedicated DAC * Using a transport + DAC
Doesn't help. The PC is going to be sending that errant voltage out of *every* port, not just USB. So it'll just be transferred over the HDMI instead and the same problem will happen.
what about the hdmi from the gpu to a tv and then optical to the dac ? does that compromise pure quality ? isnt the gpu the source or the motherboard ?
* Very few DACs have proper galvanic isolation - mainly those with custom USB implementation (Schiit Unison USB, Holo Audio's Titanus USB module, etc). * PCs barf power out of every single port. USB, ethernet, you name it. * If streaming from your PC, ensure you are *not* using shielded cable. This connects the ground planes of the two devices, which will transfer noise. (So no CAT7 or CAT8) * A simple Raspberry Pi running Volumio or similar is a very solid option for removing noise. If you want more options than just USB, the Pi2AES is a great, cheap option that objectively measures quite well. * Optical is generally very poor, at least for consumer products.
@@johnlane2395 "Schiit"* FWIW, that's only true with the ES9028 DAC, not with the Multibit DAC option. Also overall the built-in DACs for the Jotunheim are a bit underwhelming, but it's an OK option if you're limited on desk space or just want the convenience.
" Pi2AES is a great, cheap option" Sadly not if you include the shipping to EU i checked it out would be around 300 dollars shipping + 200 Dollars import tax and yeah no thanks to that
For the past 12 years I have bought motherboards with an optical out and used that to my sound system. My dac is USB capable but also has an optical in that I use instead. If you believe USB is noisy why would you use it?
USB offers much higher bandwidth (which is useful for some options like oversampling with HQPlayer) and can also be async, meaning the DAC controls the timing of the samples rather than the PC (which is generally going to be bad at this).
@@TheGamerUnknown My DAC's optical connection is up to 24/192 with the Crystal 4398 chip. I don't need more. It also sounds better to my ear than USB. Paul overlooked optical in this video but praised it in past videos. It has been available on PC motherboards for a very long time and still is today. It may be technically inferior to USB but is still perfectly fine to use and removes worry about electrical and other noise.
Heck, mid range computer motherboards usually have the full 7.1 analogue jack audio (but yes, would definitely want to further clean that to) along with hopefully great presumably mostly clean power delivery and alright semi decent audio & shielding right off the bat to clean up. In general for pc stuff especially including peripherals, gaming typically means high performance and then you can choose a product that doesn't go full in with the somewhat over the top gamerey branding, there's a great selection of minimist stuff as well; partly because it goes quite well with the highly marketed RGB (i.e colour spectrum) lighting.
@@FloppyBread added though maybe niche connectivity and mainly much cleaner power earlier in the chain, especially; with over the top high end motherboards
The other thing here is to look at what PC is being used. High end gaming Motherboards like Aorus extreme range (Intel and AMD) have done crazy good things to help with all of this. Just like sound not all PC's are equal
I have found that well-designed desktop/laptop motherboards do not have noticeable noise on the USB ports. The only ones I can vouch for at this point are Lenovo Thinkpad business-class laptops and certain Macbook Pro models. The Dell Latitude business-class laptops are among the noisiest I have tested. My test "rig" is a cheap Behringer Audio Interface. It is so badly designed that recordings you make with it will be unacceptable on a noisy computer. There is a loud annoying buzz. With Thinkpads, it is dead silent.
I can't understand when you are saying the name of that internal routing program. "Ardevarna" or something. Can't look it up unless I see or hear it spelled out. Can anyone help?
It's pretty simple: The internal DAC in your phone/computer sucks. You buy an external one to circumvent the internal one and let the audio signal be processed in the external DAC, thus providing much more fidelity. For a computer you can connect big fancy DACs (perhaps with a built in amplifier), but for a phone/tablet it depends on what you can connect, and also what is easier carrying around. I have different DACs for my computers but a Dragonfly one for my iPhone, since there is an adapter from Lightning to USB-A. You need wired headphones if you're gonna use headphones since wireless headphones will only use the internal (bad) DAC of the device.
No. A ferrite core might help if the cable is picking up something from the ambient environment, but it won't do anything in the case of noise coming from the source.
I personally just use a TOSLINK cable to isolate the ground loop issues. Most Mid Range and up Motherboards will have a TOSLINK output for Audio, or there are inexpensive PC DAC's that plug in via USB that have a TOSLINK output that can go to your Amp or WHATEVER.
But what happens to the noise that is generated by the computer, doesn't it have an influence on the signal? A noisy device will have difficulty generating a clean signal. 1 and 0 are square, but square are not always very square and constant (squares might even be a series of sines when rising and falling as electricity isn't appearing yet arriving and leaving of elektrons, not really instantly ;)
@@edmaster3147 I don't think so, not unless the computer noise is so bad as to cause the digital 1s and 0s to be read incorrectly by the DAC, i.e. it's introducing errors in the stream. TOSlink is galvanic isolation of course, as it's light and NOT an electrical signal.
@@michaelturner4457 What you describe, isn't that 'jitter'? I suppose the degradation of an digital signal starts when the file is read and processed to use. If the signal goes through a proessor which is constantly interupted for other tasks, the buffering also allows for faults not mentioning other issues. Every step in the chain causes degrading, not only in faults, but also in electrical quality. In order to get a good signal, noise should be avoided, starting with a big noisy interupted low quality, miniscule signal path and lots of other components PC might be setting of a chain of faults... So are my thoughts at least
I know that noise was a huge problem with older spinning media hard drives. Is noise still a real issue with newer flash/nvme? Seems like an external usb sound card/dac would fit the bill.
Just connect your DAC by optical wire! Or you can have 2 separate DACs: one receiving USB data from PC and passing to the next one by optic. I have practiced the second option.
Optical has problems of its own though. It has very poor time-domain performance or "jitter" between samples, as well as being limited in bandwidth - generally 24/96 or so.
@@Wildeedge It's not "all" tradeoffs - there are just better options. Streaming from your PC to something like a Raspberry pi eliminates the noise and leaves all the bandwidth. Using a dedicated streamer wiht its own storage also solves the problem. Or using USB from PC, but with a galvanic isolator.
@@TheGamerUnknown probably at least partly due to the light from the LED bouncing against the interior wire width during its journey to the other end of the cable, something that is close to prevented when fiber optic cabling is done properly.
Τhe famous equipment lab-tester Mr Amir, has done exactly this, measured the power noise before and after a usb isolator and found no difference. He did that again with some dacs connected directly via usb and usb/galvanic isolator and measured the dac noise. Again, no difference. Of course, we'd better trust our own ears: Is there anyone who can assure us that usb galvanic isolators work? Or is there an audiophile one of these with guaranteed performance?
Data packets have a error correction doesnt it? Its either 1 or 0, there should not be any noise in the data at all. The only noise would be from external, from the pc interfering with the analog circuit
I find foobar with ASIO drivers gives me the same results as any other software. Feeds the usb sigal to an ifif usb to coax, then ifi i purifier. I run both from a 2 amp, 20,000 mah battery bank with a cable i wired up. Very nice
That is a very interesting comment. But wifi has its own issues. most DACs do not have wifi connection. adding an outboard wifi receiver and you are back to adding noise.
I can attest to this. I had been using my computer for digital audio for several years and switched to the Node a several months back. Impressed with it, I upgraded to the latest version which is far better than the previous. I find the sound to be a lot cleaner than the headless computer I was using.
"better sounding" Nah, just nah. Its all data that goes in there.. DAC can be different but still as source its does not matter one bit. And yes i had Bluesound Node (sold it cos an cheap Raspberry Pi 4 does the same in other room) and modern ryzen computer (ROON). On my 6000€ STAX system. No differences at all.
The OS doesn't matter for noise. It's a hardware issue. Quality of the reproduced sound depends on OS, drivers and the application. Many times I've been surprised over how much better the generic open source drivers in Linux gives a better result then the manufacturers specific drivers under Windows (that said, haven't made any direct comparisons for many years). No Apple products at all here. But yeah, computer audio cards have a nasty habit of being very noisy even before the generic noise of a computer is added....
I did it cheap. $15 dac connected with optical cable. 0 noise on max volume. Speakers powered studio monitors with balanced inputs I only have rca on the dac so I don't even using that and still no noise. Next step going to be a dac with balanced output. Speakers on the desk setup.
USB isolators are good but not ideal. Ideally you want to completely separate your server from your transport/streamer and DAC. I think if you are going direct from a server to your DAC from USB then the M1 Mac Mini is by far the best/lowest noise option as it doesn’t have noisy components that are in most PCs like Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs etc… But ideally you want to completely separate your server from your streamer/transport. The best way to do that is by using ROON or Audirvanna and streaming over your network to your transport that is completely isolated electrically from your server. The absolute best way is use fiber optical network connections between your router to your server (as that eliminates all electrical network noise) and via fiber from your server to your transport, and then go I2S from your transport to your DAC. I use an M1 Mac Mini connected via fiber optical network to a Signature Rendu Optical Level 2 transport streamer and then via USB to an SU2 D2D converter and from the SU2 D2D converter via I2S to my KTE Holo May DAC. This gives you the absolute best isolation and lowest jitter and makes it sound ‘analogue’ in its smoothness, which is what you want. Electrical noise is also very important to isolate and eliminate from your computer/streamer and DAC as electrical noise can cause jitter as well. So you need both network electrical isolation via fiber and isolation from the noise of your house’s electrical system via power converters/regenerators. That’s the ideal way to eliminate as much noise and jitter as possible. The Greenwave EMF power converters ($30 on Amazon) do a great job of eliminating about 60% of your home electrical noise to your source components. I use both Greenwave and ISOTEK Acquarius power conditioners to reduce electrical noise.
That is frequently the cause of the issue he is describing. In that case, you have the same options: * Stream your music to a streamer, which then sends it to the DAC (via any digital cable) * Use optical from PC -> DAC (and suffer its downsides) * Use a dedicated storage device instead of the PC as the source in the first place
I have no idea what you are referring to. I've used a laptop plugged in via the headphone jack or used an external DAC via USB. I have never heard any bothersome electronic noises.
Just because your audio chain doesn't experience an issue doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's like saying sibilance doesn't exist because you can't hear it on your speakers.
Out of the computer you can go optical for instance. Or I2S out of a Pi which is linked (via network) as a client to a roon server... LoL on USB isolators, just connect a good external sound card in that case. One can use HDMI as well, especially on Mac's, or even firewire (with a Weiss DAC for instance). And roon is so much better than Audirvana, I guess one gets what he pays for.
@Douglas Blake true but a NAS normally dont have a high powered CPU/GPU thats usually where most of the noise comes from a NAS should in theory produce a lot less noise since its smaller but do note i said in Theory i not seen any tests on this
@Douglas Blake im still learning i just quote all the research i found i don't even have my first dac yet spent 2 years researching, learning and comparing so i can make an educated choice so far im no closer then i was 2 years ago so don't ask me things im not a scientist xD also i did say in theory and this makes 100% sense if it works or not i dont know and i never said it did any difference
@Douglas Blake Heard this before to and it makes sense as well but this is why i cant find the perfect dac for me to many "words against words"and i dont have the luxury to buy and replace or even return and its 500+ euro / dollars is to much money to just buy on hopes and dreams almost makes me sad that the options seems so limited since there is always a flaw somewhere on every dac...
@Douglas Blake Beyerdynamic A20 amp and Beyerdynamic DT770 pro 250 ohm i got from my wife as a gift and a Argon Minidac which only has an optical input i know jitter but it was cheap just to get things working all of this will be replaced in the future using Jriver to downsample all DSD files i purchased to 44.1 until i can decide on a dac and stream to my Denon AVR when using speakers the dacs i been tempted to buy is SONCOZ SGD1 but i recently heard bad things about it so might go for Topping A90 but not sure ill mainly use it for music and games My demands are and this is why i cant decide on what dac to get im picky but on a "tight" budget and sadly the options are limited here in EU 100% neutral 100% accurate / Analytical (or as close as can be) DSD 512 minimum (MQA is a bonus to test to see what all the fuss is about) Good Soundstage for games Good imaging Superb details and maximum 1000 dollars
@Douglas Blake interesting then ill give the Soncoz SDG1 or Topping A90 a go cant be worse then what i got at least and they seem to be quite reputable as brands if you can trust people which i dont haha
@Douglas Blake They're computers, sure. But they're designed for one purpose and not general use. They don't have a massive couple hundred watt GPU and CPU to deal with. Can they pass on noise? Sure. But it's going to be so much lower it'll be inaudible - whereas with a gaming desktop it's not.
Optical has problems of its own though. It has very poor time-domain performance or "jitter" between samples, as well as being limited in bandwidth - generally 24/96 or so.
@@discy12345 Interesting. But there are ways to further reduce noise over copper, right? Should there be a new optical standard? Is optical inherently a jittery approach?
@@jon4715 The only way to get better optical is better hardware. Consumer optical for TOSLINK is generally crappy LED emitters and cheap plastic cable. You'd need much higher-end gear to reduce the problem. I'm not sure if that's possible within a reasonable budget. Certainly a glass and laser setup wouldn't have the issue, but good luck getting that for cheap! lol.
Denoise it with AI on the fly, maybe even get better quality audio, sort of like DLSS and upscaling from 1080p to 4k, which actually looks better then native 4k for some reason, all at double the performance. Sound like a problem AI can solve.
In my long experience with USB audio, I achieved the best results with a JCAT USB XE Card + iFi iUSB 3.0, both being sensitive to the quality of their power supplies.
I would rather not filter out what is avoidable coming in and find the solution at the start of the issue. Electric engineers should do better jobs in designing computers or consumers should be prepared to pay more for better products...
@@edmaster3147 I agree in part but the burden is primarily on the DAC engineers as they are highly sensitive devices. USB is a general usage serial bus technology where the spec is clearly laid out and should be followed by all parties.
In all of the comments here, no-where do I see any mention of *_conclusive proof_* that the "noise" that exists on all usb interfaces even causes problems that are audible. Yes, computers are noisy devices, that is a given. Has anyone actually checked to see if this noise causes a problem that can truly be *_heard_* on stereo equipment, at the speakers? It's just a question.
@@tomterrific9459 that's what I'm confused by. USB is sending a digital signal. It may be degraded by noise, but unless you live next to an unshielded MRI, the information will reproduce exactly the same. I think the issue people are referring to has to deal with the connection to the DAC itself affecting the output audio signal, not the input signal being noisy because that shouldn't matter. A good DAC should solve all this problems. That is literally what it is designed for.
@@tomterrific9459 Amir over at Audio Science Review has done some testing related to this question, I believe whe he looked at USB cables. If memory serves it makes a difference in audible ranges when DAC are designed correctly to handle said situations. One thing that was clear is all the aftermarket stuff such as what Audio Quest sells makes zero difference.
Isolation transformers and Line filters; on high tech digital gear? Sounds like a road us AV guys have been down before. Whaddayou know what's old is new again!
Audio science review has shown that galvanic isolators don't help the signal at all. If someone has data to support it then I would like to see it. The DAC should be properly designed to avoid these problems that a band aid is supposed to fix.
ASR is a cult like forum , stay away . They measure instead of listening and make their assumptions based on measures not listening tests. Their assumptions and thought process are wrong .
@Douglas Blake Golden ears are what you are listening with not oscyloscopes and multi meters... Most of attempts of "measuring " performance are out of context and not considering components , room, specific cables that all play role in audio reproduction and these combined aspects can not be measured . ASR is great for this group of people , mostly engineers who must have black on white evidence of anything to form their opinion or all else is just Voo Doo, snake oil, placeebo and other low excuses. Start listening and spend time on working on your critical listening skills so you can believe them heard thru your ears....
@Douglas Blake Some fools from ASR like cults would look at measurements and buy, sure you can look at some specs but only listening test gives you proper perspective .
I have a M1 Macbook / Audirvana with USB Audioquest Jitterblocker and test it against a dedicated streamer like Bluesound node and didn't hear any difference.
@@Fluterra you say this because you auditioned the Bifrost then realized that it doesn’t isolate computer noise? how did you come to that conclusion? I’ve had the node2 and the paradigm Link streamers, both devices took away soundstage in comparison to PC-Bifrost then Vidar amp
@@TheGamerUnknown Galvanic isolation is only one of many types of noise. There's a reason why companies like NAGRA use more than 20 power supplies in their DACs. Schiit has great marketing and sounds good for the price they charge.
It is often not outside the audible band however. In my case, the moment I boot up something intensive (a game or other application) I immediately get a high-pitched shrill coming from my speakers - both loud and within the audible band. I used a cheap raspberry pi as a streamer to fix it.
@@Harald_Reindl excellent point. Using a balanced signal path or isolation transformer will often solve the issue as well. Lots of audio noise is due to sharing the same reference level and the conversion of noise current through some common impedance to a noise voltage.
A lot of Bs in these comments here. Modern computers and modern DACs do not have any noise problems. At all. PCs and MACs are used in studios, and i mean EVERY studio in the world and they do not have any problems at all. Modern computers use USB audio 2.0 and you need to use ASIO aka bit perfect output. I have kinda cheap DAC on a kinda bad and old laptop but still on my hifiman anandas and THX AAA amp it is dead silent. I can lift the volume so high that an drum kick literally makes my ears bleed and still no noise issues at all. Problem comes if your computer/electrical system has some fatal fails in the first place.
They talking about background noise. You can upgrade your system isolating noise that you dont hear it now on max vol. After doing that, you gonna get more black, cleanner background and overall clarity will be better.
I thought most USB input DACs have filtering for computer noise... It has been shown bu Amir from Audio Science Review quite conclusively. He specifically tested highly priced usb isolators against dac filtering. No difference.
Very few come with proper galvanic isolation. I have a ~$480 SONCOZ DAC. My PC barfs so much power out of every port, it was very audible when I started up a game or anything more intensive.
@@TheGamerUnknown that's true same problem with the Chord Mojo connected to my Mac Pro via USB... added a Gustard U16 digital interface between the Mac and the Mojo and problem solved.
@@TheGamerUnknown i was planning on buying this SONCOZ dac based on price i presume it is the SGD1 but after reading this comment i might steer away from it
@@pappo666 It's overall a good DAC. I was just trying to point out this is a problem even on "midrange" equipment - not just junk/b-tier stuff. I'm not sure what else in the price range would offer isolation. The BiFrost does, but it's very colored and also more expensive.
@@TheGamerUnknown might save up and get the Topping A90 i think its called or the DENAFRIPS ARES II R2R DAC that i originally was planning but told is "Totally overkill" want that sexy DSD support that Schiiit refuse to implement
Stupid question maybe but here it is: I use an Apple Air3 to stream music from Spotify to my headphone and I have placed an audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt usb dac between my headphone and my IPad. Have I still that noise? I stream also music from my IPad using WiFi to my Marantz streamer receiver. Is there a problem ? If I understand it well even with the MacBook there’s a problem. I hadn’t heard of this problem. Thanks in advance Ludo
@Douglas Blake A streamer only does a dedicated job, optimized for audio. A computer with software is like driving on a circuit with a city bus, where the streamer is a sports-car.
use a usb-to-somethingelse converter (x-spdif?), like many in the market, and the problem is solved....and never NEVER use +V from pc into dac, just the 0V... change how your usb interface work
Hello from the Netherlands, thank you Sir for some good advice! I bought myself a DAC (Cambridge Audio DacMAgic 100) and installed Audirvana. Sounds a lot better than before!
I use optical fiber to isolate my server from the network switch feeding a low powered sbc like the allo usbridge signature. This connects to my hugo2 dac via its clean USB output.
I have an industrial Intona 2.5kV galvanic isolator. Works great.
I am using ifi micro iUSB3.0 with ifi Gemini cable and it sounds FANTASTIC! The galvanic isolation is achieved in a way that the data head of the Gemini cable is connected to the PC, and the power head to the iUSB3.0
Fortunately most digital switching noise starts in MHz range and goes on up from there. It's all about careful PCB design. The ADC/DAC PCB design should have dedicated/filtered converter power supply and ground planes (that act like a giant free filter cap ) and also make sure the digital data to/from the converters have their own path back to their digital grounds.
I use HDMI from my PC using JRiver Media Center for audio through a NAD M51 DAC and it sounds incredible. I wish more DAC's included the HDMI inputs. I tried USB and I didn't like it at all
I use Jriver too, has ripped most of my library and some hi-rez. I use iFI DAC and Supra 3m usb with shielded volt.. I like the sound quality and I'm happy with Jriver who sort my music and adds coverart.
I do the same, using the HDMI port to feed my Denon AVR-3808 which then powers Tannoy Revolution R2 and mXC centre channel, HTS200 rear and dual TFX subwoofers all Tannoy and I get really good and clean sound, I can see the difference between my previous USB external DAC when compared to current setup.
Thank you for this video! I just started a free trial with Audirvana. Question: How can I get the volume control to work in the Audirvana panel/interface? Right now my computer (win10) volume and my Audirvana volume do not change the volume. As a result, I am forced to put a preamp in my signal chain (Denefrips Iris>Aers II>power amp) to control volume (otherwise it is extremely loud). Thanks in advance for any help and/or suggestions!
I have a Synology NAS device that stores all my music in FLAC format. It’s connected to a Netgear router via Cat 5 Ethernet cable. The router is connected via Cat 5 to an ELAC Discovery music server which is connected via SPDIF to an Enlightened Audio Designs DSP 7000 DAC (still a honey after all these years). It sounds quite good. Any thoughts on how I could clean up the signal for even better sound? Would upgrading to Cat 6 or Cat 7 be worth the effort?
I use a Mac mini as both a Roon server and an endpoint connected to my Dacmagic 200M with an Audioquest Jitterbug in between the Mac and the dac. Do you think that setup is good enough to filter out most of the noise? Also is use Roon a good enough product to bypass macOS’ resampling?
@@dwmb484 I almost exclusively listen to my purchased digital library (primarily DSD) and Roon is so much better than Audirvana.. Not just with organising the library but how it works with zones and multiple devices at the same time, too. But I would say that I have not heard any noise whatsoever with either my M1 Air (100% solid state, no moving parts) nor my M1 mini (it has a fan, but it's only used when editing). Even if the music's paused it's impossible to hear any noise, provided I have either of my DACs are connected. Of course it will also depend on the recording, which people seem to forget..
Most competent DACs will use switching regulators to regenerate the voltage supplies internally to isolate themselves from the USB bus, so for digital stuff like that its usually not a problem as it will have its own private supply with generous filtering to keep the USB noise out of the DAC. But for analog stuff its a different story. I remember when I first tested an amplifier I was quite pleased that it only had a few mv of ripple on the output despite using an electronic supply. The sine and square waves were nice and clean, and then I hooked it to the PC. Even with input filtering there was something like 5-6 VOLTS P-P of just noise from the PC's soundcard. Adjusting the gain and levels brought it down to something more reasonable, but still has so much noise you can't even see the audio waveform at listening levels of around 65-70 dB. Of course the issue being that the outputs on a soundcard are quite anemic so to drive speakers means you need plenty of gain, and that means the noise gets amplified as well.
I have experience this issue recently - it seems even with a USB 3.0 connection and having an external audio interface, it still generate noise over the main outputs.
My solution to this in previous instances has been to run the computer (assuming laptop) via battery. There is zero noise when we tried that in the same environment, with the same outboard setup.
The only obvious gotcha there is battery life.
The issue now is I've upgraded the computer to an all in one - mainly because you can get a desktop CPU and therefore more number crunching speed without (as serious) concerns as temperature bottle necks.
I'm looking to make a split cable that will provide connection to an external power source and allow the data connection to and from the computer.
The other option is to isolate the computer power and have a cleaner supply - such as a UPS to provide a cleaner power source
The operating system does not generate noise. Albeit, the operating system can trigger noise, if the operating system is busy with all manner of crap that is unrelated to feeding the DAC data, causing the CPU to heat up and fans to speed up, etc. Ideally, you would not want the fan to turn on -- and it should not have to, if the computer's only job is to feed data to a DAC.
Noise is generated via the hardware -- not the operating system.
The Innuos Statement transport uses a quad-core Pentium computer, chosen for its low noise. I am not sure which version of the Pentium CPU is used. And there are many other noise design features of the motherboard, case, power supply, etc, that makes that computer deliver an amazingly quiet and accurate data stream to your DAC. And you will mortgage your home to own that transport. And it runs a Linux kernel (not sure which one), but I am assuming that they did not want to deal with Windows' bloat, or licensing costs, when Linux is free and open source.
Cheers!
Your completely discounting a weak power supply. Bad caps, add noise to everything, and is the main cause of Power supply failures. Even the mother board capacitors can bulge and work, but be very noisy. You can hear a mouse move across the screen. Always check all the used equipment for bad caps (filters).
The lower CPU frequency (600Mhz-1Ghz) - the better
@@Eye_of_state And you are completely discounting that different kind of mainboards and computer exists (like Macs, Mac Minis, and for instance the Asus ROG boards with special audio output stages).
Using a MacMini in my setup with Uptone ISO Regen - isolator. Works very well!
Connects to a Denafrips Gaia DDC and Terminator Plus DAC:-)
Just curious:
Do you think the Gaia helps a lot? And does it help to both use an isolator AND a DDC? (is the isolator still doing anything useful, is what i'm trying to ask)
Gaia helps - just a small additional level of refinement.
Since I do Pro Audio (play guitar and such). I Used to have a Mackie Onyx 820i hocked up to my PC over Firewire. When using usb I had ground loops like crazy, but with Firewire, no more ground loops. One sugestion would be to build a computer with optical out and use the optical since it's isolated also. For my Office I use RME Babyface Pro over USD and it works well.
You can try digital coax from your computer to your dac with a galvanic isolator. Have heard someone suggest it.
Is your dac close to your computer, then use optical light cable.
usb transmits 5v power with comtuter noise and
digital coax is connected to GND in the computer and can transmit noise and you get GND loop.
optical provides the cleanest signal.
Schiit Eitr converts the USB to spdif and basically solves this issue. They don't make it any more and it now sells for above cost on ebay because people like it so much.
2:22 Uhm yes there is Paul - optical S/PDIF - it's an old but gold standard and still extremely useful. Wish it would get a proper revision though, with much more bandwidth for high rate DSD & PCM.
it has lots of jitter though
@@net_news Which disappears progressively as you use higher and higher sample rate standards.
@@edfort5704 Would an optical standard revision have the same issues with basic 48khz PCM?
@@edfort5704 mmm... not sure about that, in fact, the jitter goes higher when you use higher samplerates over toslink.
Don't get me wrong, I love toslink but It has its problems, a toslink 2.0 would be fantastic. Unfortunatelly awful USB was adopted as the standard for audio.
@@net_news Jitter depends on the transport quality because it is responsible for timing. With a lot of jitter timing can get affected.
I'm currently using a Surface Pro 7+ with a Chord Mojo 2 and sometimes an iFi iDSD Signature, both with Sennheiser HD650. Would you say my set up is a noisy one, even when the tablet's fan is on?
Also I listen to music on foobar with asio bit perfect and CZcams with Windows mixer, mostly CZcams because music sounds better and clearer than on bit perfect foobar, why is this happening??
USB sends digital audio information, so it shouldn't be affected by noise (except in the most extreme cases), right?
The problem is that through the USB connection the converted analogue signal is being affected by the digital signal and voltage from the connection itself?
I wonder if the Topping D10/D10S USB DAC that converts to SPDIF helps ??
I use Roon streaming with BluOs to my Main Audio system that works fine.However my desktop system needs a USB to feed my Mojo DAC I first orderd a USB cable Audio quest and see if that improves the sound or less noise next step would be a USB noisr isolater if needed .
What about using the computer as a music server, but using Roon on the computer and then using airplay to get the music to the av reciever.
Yes. Audio quest dragonfly is a magical solution plugger into my iMac
I just remembered i got a galvanic isolator break out box that i haven't tried using with my computer! Thanks
Hi, Paul. I use three AudioQuest Jitterbugs between my Windows 10 based laptop and the DAC (one to the USB port in series with the SSD that contains all the files, one in the otherwise empty USB port beside the one already mentioned and the third in series with the DAC) . I think they are excellent. I have no issues with noise, with very low level sounds easily heard either by themselves or in the presence of other, louder music. I have a second system where I have exactly the same configuration, although it isn't quite as resolving as the other system.
Best method to make PCs noise free is get one with an optical out, (to the DAC). There are cheap add-in cards that do just that, which are very reasonably priced. No need to buy a highly equipped sound card with a variety of ports just to get optical from it. (Or you buy a motherboard with optical on it.)
However I ran the Audioquest Jitterbug for USB and I found it worked well. Am still flumoxed to hear any difference between optical and Jitterbug with USB.
wow I'm glad I found this. Turns out my motherboard had S/PDIF Out header, so I simply needed to buy the connector slot addin.
The only thing left to do is get a cheap DAC just to get signal to the speakers. All I care about is to get rid of interference.
So is the noise from the pc radiating out and going into near by cables or is the noise internal and going out through the audio or HDMI cables (in my case cause I use the pc for movies) that are plugged into my AVR?
@Douglas Blake so you're saying the audio and video travelling along the HDMI cable from the PC to my receiver should be unaffected by the noise because the signal in the cable is digital?
There are also the so-called asynchronous DACs which isolate the computer's clock frequency from the DAC's own clock frequency so that they run asynchronously, when a USB-cable is connected between them. It should eliminate jitter, but whether it also eliminates computer noise, I know nothing about.
My Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus has a ground lift switch. Great feature to kill the noise.
I don't have much of a dog in the Audiophile fight but my PC throws out a ton of audio garbage. I dunno if it's a limitation of my Focusrite Scarlett (I've tried three generations of this product) but I get some pretty bad coil whine sounds when my GPU is doing anything. I had to get an Ifi iDefender to break the loop. I don't think it's a great idea to have your main PC doing audio playback duties.
I ran into the exact same thing. For that reason, I use a raspberry pi for playback, the PC was just too noisy.
get an external soundcard with optical digital out - case closed
@@Harald_Reindl I don't delve too deeply into these issues but jitter is a real phenomenon. I probably couldn't tell in a blind A/B test but it's measurable, and internal PC hardware comes up short most of the time.
@@Harald_Reindl Sound cards are generally garbage, also they're susceptible to voltage issues which can impact their performance in a similar way.
My laptop have 1 usb output with 5v. And 1 without power, only for data ! Thats the best for Music ?
Berkeley Alpha USB to convert USB to AES using very good clocks. The sound quality is fantastic.
I am using usb just to power it and optical for the sound on my dac and it still makes a bunch of static white noise. It is just a pain considering a dac should be able to filter that itself.
A well designed USB DAC shouldn't need an external isolator, it should be built in as part of the DAC's design.
Definitely. I always hear this about USB and computers being bad for noise and jitter, but for whatever reason I just don't hear it. I use the USB input on my Luxman CD player as a DAC, and the music that comes out when I use the USB input sounds exactly the same as the music that comes from the CDs it plays.
@@johngladwaller2436 Doubt it.
Build the USB isolator in your DAC Paul...
Please
Does anyone make an isolated USB PCI card? The audio recording and mixing industry might like that.
My GPU was making quite a lot of noise in my sound system, but really only when I was playing games. I put in a PCIe sound card that has optical out, and that completely solved my issue. No need to isolate USB.
USB or HDMI? I Have both in my DAC
Please allow me this kind of related question... (looking at a very expensive Yamaha unit) - - - > Does a 6,000 usd CD player sound equal (or better) than a separate transport + dac?
The actual CD reading is going to be identical between even cheap and extremely high-end units. CD is designed to be about as foolproof as possible, even handling significant disk damage.
The difference when it comes to CD audio is everything after that - the DAC, Amplifier and speakers. The built-in DAC and amp with most CD players is total garbage, regardless of the price. You are much better of either:
* Ripping them and just playing the digital file with a dedicated DAC
* Using a transport + DAC
once you go transport/dac.....
when you use digital out buy the cheapest device which supports it, case closed
@@TheGamerUnknown Thanks. But... My guess is, at that price, Yamaha must use a darn mighty dac, no?
@@laika25 Doubtful. Most DACs integrated into other devices are pretty poor quality. You're paying for convenience and the brand, not the quality.
I'm a coaxial user and I also use my Dap as the source which I find sounds better than when I use my PC.
Please, what are the programs you mentioned towards the end?
Audirvana
@@richardsaila8073 Thanks!
Doesn't the Tidal App on PC allow for bitperfect transfer to an external DAC via HDMI?
Doesn't help. The PC is going to be sending that errant voltage out of *every* port, not just USB. So it'll just be transferred over the HDMI instead and the same problem will happen.
what about the hdmi from the gpu to a tv and then optical to the dac ? does that compromise pure quality ? isnt the gpu the source or the motherboard ?
I tried that gpu hdmi output once, and it's terrible. It picks up a lot of noise from the coils in the gpu
HDMI is video transfer, Optical is audio transfer. GPU is Graphics Processing Unit.
Well Paul!!! If you would hint when the bridge 3 would be released (streamer) we would be happy campers.
* Very few DACs have proper galvanic isolation - mainly those with custom USB implementation (Schiit Unison USB, Holo Audio's Titanus USB module, etc).
* PCs barf power out of every single port. USB, ethernet, you name it.
* If streaming from your PC, ensure you are *not* using shielded cable. This connects the ground planes of the two devices, which will transfer noise. (So no CAT7 or CAT8)
* A simple Raspberry Pi running Volumio or similar is a very solid option for removing noise. If you want more options than just USB, the Pi2AES is a great, cheap option that objectively measures quite well.
* Optical is generally very poor, at least for consumer products.
SHIIT Jotunheim 2 DAC has a noise floor that is inaudible, the RF noise is gone!
@@johnlane2395 "Schiit"* FWIW, that's only true with the ES9028 DAC, not with the Multibit DAC option. Also overall the built-in DACs for the Jotunheim are a bit underwhelming, but it's an OK option if you're limited on desk space or just want the convenience.
" Pi2AES is a great, cheap option" Sadly not if you include the shipping to EU i checked it out would be around 300 dollars shipping + 200 Dollars import tax and yeah no thanks to that
For the past 12 years I have bought motherboards with an optical out and used that to my sound system. My dac is USB capable but also has an optical in that I use instead. If you believe USB is noisy why would you use it?
USB offers much higher bandwidth (which is useful for some options like oversampling with HQPlayer) and can also be async, meaning the DAC controls the timing of the samples rather than the PC (which is generally going to be bad at this).
@@TheGamerUnknown My DAC's optical connection is up to 24/192 with the Crystal 4398 chip. I don't need more. It also sounds better to my ear than USB. Paul overlooked optical in this video but praised it in past videos. It has been available on PC motherboards for a very long time and still is today. It may be technically inferior to USB but is still perfectly fine to use and removes worry about electrical and other noise.
Heck, mid range computer motherboards usually have the full 7.1 analogue jack audio (but yes, would definitely want to further clean that to) along with hopefully great presumably mostly clean power delivery and alright semi decent audio & shielding right off the bat to clean up.
In general for pc stuff especially including peripherals, gaming typically means high performance and then you can choose a product that doesn't go full in with the somewhat over the top gamerey branding, there's a great selection of minimist stuff as well; partly because it goes quite well with the highly marketed RGB (i.e colour spectrum) lighting.
@@Walker998 you said a whole lot of nothing
@@FloppyBread added though maybe niche connectivity and mainly much cleaner power earlier in the chain, especially; with over the top high end motherboards
The other thing here is to look at what PC is being used. High end gaming Motherboards like Aorus extreme range (Intel and AMD) have done crazy good things to help with all of this. Just like sound not all PC's are equal
I have found that well-designed desktop/laptop motherboards do not have noticeable noise on the USB ports. The only ones I can vouch for at this point are Lenovo Thinkpad business-class laptops and certain Macbook Pro models. The Dell Latitude business-class laptops are among the noisiest I have tested. My test "rig" is a cheap Behringer Audio Interface. It is so badly designed that recordings you make with it will be unacceptable on a noisy computer. There is a loud annoying buzz. With Thinkpads, it is dead silent.
I can't understand when you are saying the name of that internal routing program. "Ardevarna" or something. Can't look it up unless I see or hear it spelled out. Can anyone help?
audirvana
Thanks heaps, Richardk
I use IFI usb isolator re locker
The ELAC DDP-2 works fine through USB to the computer with no noise.
What about if you're running the windows computer out of HDMI into a Receiver?
...or optical output ??
Use a DDC (digital to digital converter) and/or an audiowise opto-USB… great product!
I think I'd only be able to try the Douk Audio converter as the Audiowise is nearly 8 times more expensive.
a ddc is a must! if you mainly listen to audio through a pc.
@@Leo-yn5fx Agree - Douk Audio is a great product for the price
I don't understand DACs at all. Do I need a different DAC for a computer, iPad, iPhone etc.? Is there a good book explaining all of this?
It's pretty simple: The internal DAC in your phone/computer sucks. You buy an external one to circumvent the internal one and let the audio signal be processed in the external DAC, thus providing much more fidelity. For a computer you can connect big fancy DACs (perhaps with a built in amplifier), but for a phone/tablet it depends on what you can connect, and also what is easier carrying around. I have different DACs for my computers but a Dragonfly one for my iPhone, since there is an adapter from Lightning to USB-A. You need wired headphones if you're gonna use headphones since wireless headphones will only use the internal (bad) DAC of the device.
wouldn’t you be better off getting a good DDC, Digital to Digital Converter?
DDCs, if not designed well, can just pass through the noise all the same.
USB or HDMI cables with Ferrite ??
Helps ??
No. A ferrite core might help if the cable is picking up something from the ambient environment, but it won't do anything in the case of noise coming from the source.
I personally just use a TOSLINK cable to isolate the ground loop issues. Most Mid Range and up Motherboards will have a TOSLINK output for Audio, or there are inexpensive PC DAC's that plug in via USB that have a TOSLINK output that can go to your Amp or WHATEVER.
But what happens to the noise that is generated by the computer, doesn't it have an influence on the signal? A noisy device will have difficulty generating a clean signal. 1 and 0 are square, but square are not always very square and constant (squares might even be a series of sines when rising and falling as electricity isn't appearing yet arriving and leaving of elektrons, not really instantly ;)
@@edmaster3147 I don't think so, not unless the computer noise is so bad as to cause the digital 1s and 0s to be read incorrectly by the DAC, i.e. it's introducing errors in the stream.
TOSlink is galvanic isolation of course, as it's light and NOT an electrical signal.
@@michaelturner4457 What you describe, isn't that 'jitter'? I suppose the degradation of an digital signal starts when the file is read and processed to use. If the signal goes through a proessor which is constantly interupted for other tasks, the buffering also allows for faults not mentioning other issues. Every step in the chain causes degrading, not only in faults, but also in electrical quality. In order to get a good signal, noise should be avoided, starting with a big noisy interupted low quality, miniscule signal path and lots of other components PC might be setting of a chain of faults... So are my thoughts at least
Audirvana also has “system optimization” settings from low to extreme which can quiet the hell out of your computer.
You can just do this yourself, if you know a bit about your system.. There is no need for a dedicated app like that.
@@danielkuik1723 you sure can but it’s way less work and instantaneous as soon as you hit the play button.
I know that noise was a huge problem with older spinning media hard drives. Is noise still a real issue with newer flash/nvme? Seems like an external usb sound card/dac would fit the bill.
Just connect your DAC by optical wire! Or you can have 2 separate DACs: one receiving USB data from PC and passing to the next one by optic. I have practiced the second option.
Optical has problems of its own though. It has very poor time-domain performance or "jitter" between samples, as well as being limited in bandwidth - generally 24/96 or so.
@@TheGamerUnknown 44100 has much more headroom than you ever could hear - all that hires stuff is remastered and would sound identical with 44100
@@TheGamerUnknown optical introduces jitter. It's all trade offs.
@@Wildeedge It's not "all" tradeoffs - there are just better options. Streaming from your PC to something like a Raspberry pi eliminates the noise and leaves all the bandwidth. Using a dedicated streamer wiht its own storage also solves the problem. Or using USB from PC, but with a galvanic isolator.
@@TheGamerUnknown probably at least partly due to the light from the LED bouncing against the interior wire width during its journey to the other end of the cable, something that is close to prevented when fiber optic cabling is done properly.
Τhe famous equipment lab-tester Mr Amir, has done exactly this, measured the power noise before and after a usb isolator and found no difference. He did that again with some dacs connected directly via usb and usb/galvanic isolator and measured the dac noise. Again, no difference. Of course, we'd better trust our own ears: Is there anyone who can assure us that usb galvanic isolators work? Or is there an audiophile one of these with guaranteed performance?
5 months later...
Data packets have a error correction doesnt it? Its either 1 or 0, there should not be any noise in the data at all. The only noise would be from external, from the pc interfering with the analog circuit
I find foobar with ASIO drivers gives me the same results as any other software. Feeds the usb sigal to an ifif usb to coax, then ifi i purifier. I run both from a 2 amp, 20,000 mah battery bank with a cable i wired up. Very nice
Almost all computers have digital out unusual not to have it
@@ford1546 coax isn't seen on laptops
windows with foobar and utilizing wasapi to oush the audio the your dac works as well
USB can introduce lots of unwanted noise but there are some ways to mitigate it. Just ask Rick Hartley, Robert Feranec & others in the EMC world.
Why not just stream with wifi and eliminate the noise?
Exactly. I get unbelievable quality over Airplay2 with my stereo OG Homepods.
Stream what into where? I changed from Play-fi to Roon which is much better. Bitperfect reproduction into an input chain.
That is a very interesting comment. But wifi has its own issues. most DACs do not have wifi connection. adding an outboard wifi receiver and you are back to adding noise.
A dedicated streamer such as the Bluesound Node is a much more elegant, better sounding and cheaper solution.
Node is a good solution that I like too. But "better sounding" is a little bit "personal"...
I can attest to this. I had been using my computer for digital audio for several years and switched to the Node a several months back. Impressed with it, I upgraded to the latest version which is far better than the previous. I find the sound to be a lot cleaner than the headless computer I was using.
"better sounding" Nah, just nah. Its all data that goes in there.. DAC can be different but still as source its does not matter one bit. And yes i had Bluesound Node (sold it cos an cheap Raspberry Pi 4 does the same in other room) and modern ryzen computer (ROON). On my 6000€ STAX system. No differences at all.
The OS doesn't matter for noise. It's a hardware issue. Quality of the reproduced sound depends on OS, drivers and the application. Many times I've been surprised over how much better the generic open source drivers in Linux gives a better result then the manufacturers specific drivers under Windows (that said, haven't made any direct comparisons for many years). No Apple products at all here.
But yeah, computer audio cards have a nasty habit of being very noisy even before the generic noise of a computer is added....
I did it cheap. $15 dac connected with optical cable. 0 noise on max volume. Speakers powered studio monitors with balanced inputs I only have rca on the dac so I don't even using that and still no noise. Next step going to be a dac with balanced output. Speakers on the desk setup.
Use a laptop where possible, as the battery is better than a switching power supply and consider a data only USB and provide 5v separately
USB isolators are good but not ideal. Ideally you want to completely separate your server from your transport/streamer and DAC. I think if you are going direct from a server to your DAC from USB then the M1 Mac Mini is by far the best/lowest noise option as it doesn’t have noisy components that are in most PCs like Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs etc… But ideally you want to completely separate your server from your streamer/transport. The best way to do that is by using ROON or Audirvanna and streaming over your network to your transport that is completely isolated electrically from your server. The absolute best way is use fiber optical network connections between your router to your server (as that eliminates all electrical network noise) and via fiber from your server to your transport, and then go I2S from your transport to your DAC. I use an M1 Mac Mini connected via fiber optical network to a Signature Rendu Optical Level 2 transport streamer and then via USB to an SU2 D2D converter and from the SU2 D2D converter via I2S to my KTE Holo May DAC. This gives you the absolute best isolation and lowest jitter and makes it sound ‘analogue’ in its smoothness, which is what you want. Electrical noise is also very important to isolate and eliminate from your computer/streamer and DAC as electrical noise can cause jitter as well. So you need both network electrical isolation via fiber and isolation from the noise of your house’s electrical system via power converters/regenerators. That’s the ideal way to eliminate as much noise and jitter as possible. The Greenwave EMF power converters ($30 on Amazon) do a great job of eliminating about 60% of your home electrical noise to your source components. I use both Greenwave and ISOTEK Acquarius power conditioners to reduce electrical noise.
Even a high end dac like the may benefits from a ddc? wow
What if noise is from a graphics card?
That is frequently the cause of the issue he is describing. In that case, you have the same options:
* Stream your music to a streamer, which then sends it to the DAC (via any digital cable)
* Use optical from PC -> DAC (and suffer its downsides)
* Use a dedicated storage device instead of the PC as the source in the first place
the matrix audio element h is probably a good one for this problem :-]
It's very expensive. Way cheaper to just buy a cheap streaming device like a raspberry pi for a fraction of the price and better results.
I have no idea what you are referring to. I've used a laptop plugged in via the headphone jack or used an external DAC via USB. I have never heard any bothersome electronic noises.
Just because your audio chain doesn't experience an issue doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's like saying sibilance doesn't exist because you can't hear it on your speakers.
@@TheGamerUnknown I cannot hear this on my speakers or any of my headphones. Maybe, it does exist, but I simply can't hear it.
@Douglas Blake That's a good point. That's probably why I knew absolutely nothing about this issue.
i use supra usb to topping d10 and coax out to another dac and its clean topping d10 i got for 40 euro
Out of the computer you can go optical for instance. Or I2S out of a Pi which is linked (via network) as a client to a roon server... LoL on USB isolators, just connect a good external sound card in that case. One can use HDMI as well, especially on Mac's, or even firewire (with a Weiss DAC for instance). And roon is so much better than Audirvana, I guess one gets what he pays for.
You can sound cards with toslink.
Audirvana user here. Highly recommend.
Why not stream from your nas to avoid digital noise.?
@Douglas Blake true but a NAS normally dont have a high powered CPU/GPU thats usually where most of the noise comes from a NAS should in theory produce a lot less noise since its smaller but do note i said in Theory i not seen any tests on this
@Douglas Blake im still learning i just quote all the research i found i don't even have my first dac yet spent 2 years researching, learning and comparing so i can make an educated choice so far im no closer then i was 2 years ago so don't ask me things im not a scientist xD
also i did say in theory and this makes 100% sense if it works or not i dont know and i never said it did any difference
@Douglas Blake Heard this before to and it makes sense as well but this is why i cant find the perfect dac for me to many "words against words"and i dont have the luxury to buy and replace or even return and its 500+ euro / dollars is to much money to just buy on hopes and dreams almost makes me sad that the options seems so limited since there is always a flaw somewhere on every dac...
@Douglas Blake Beyerdynamic A20 amp and Beyerdynamic DT770 pro 250 ohm i got from my wife as a gift and a Argon Minidac which only has an optical input i know jitter but it was cheap just to get things working all of this will be replaced in the future
using Jriver to downsample all DSD files i purchased to 44.1 until i can decide on a dac and stream to my Denon AVR when using speakers
the dacs i been tempted to buy is SONCOZ SGD1 but i recently heard bad things about it so might go for Topping A90 but not sure ill mainly use it for music and games
My demands are and this is why i cant decide on what dac to get im picky but on a "tight" budget and sadly the options are limited here in EU
100% neutral
100% accurate / Analytical (or as close as can be)
DSD 512 minimum (MQA is a bonus to test to see what all the fuss is about)
Good Soundstage for games
Good imaging
Superb details
and maximum 1000 dollars
@Douglas Blake interesting then ill give the Soncoz SDG1 or Topping A90 a go cant be worse then what i got at least and they seem to be quite reputable as brands if you can trust people which i dont haha
How about a music server/streamer?
@Douglas Blake They're computers, sure. But they're designed for one purpose and not general use. They don't have a massive couple hundred watt GPU and CPU to deal with. Can they pass on noise? Sure. But it's going to be so much lower it'll be inaudible - whereas with a gaming desktop it's not.
Bluesound would do the trick
There is no noise generated by a computer that affects the digital signal if you use the optical out found in most modern computers.
Optical has problems of its own though. It has very poor time-domain performance or "jitter" between samples, as well as being limited in bandwidth - generally 24/96 or so.
@@TheGamerUnknown 24/192. Apart from that I totally agree. Not sure if it results in worse sound than the noise though.
@@discy12345 Interesting. But there are ways to further reduce noise over copper, right?
Should there be a new optical standard? Is optical inherently a jittery approach?
@@jon4715 The only way to get better optical is better hardware. Consumer optical for TOSLINK is generally crappy LED emitters and cheap plastic cable. You'd need much higher-end gear to reduce the problem. I'm not sure if that's possible within a reasonable budget. Certainly a glass and laser setup wouldn't have the issue, but good luck getting that for cheap! lol.
Denoise it with AI on the fly, maybe even get better quality audio, sort of like DLSS and upscaling from 1080p to 4k, which actually looks better then native 4k for some reason, all at double the performance. Sound like a problem AI can solve.
Optical up in here like am I joke to you lol
In my long experience with USB audio, I achieved the best results with a JCAT USB XE Card + iFi iUSB 3.0, both being sensitive to the quality of their power supplies.
C"MON! While we're young gramps!
This is a non-issue in properly designed DACs. Come on electric engineers do your jobs!
I would rather not filter out what is avoidable coming in and find the solution at the start of the issue. Electric engineers should do better jobs in designing computers or consumers should be prepared to pay more for better products...
@@edmaster3147 I agree in part but the burden is primarily on the DAC engineers as they are highly sensitive devices. USB is a general usage serial bus technology where the spec is clearly laid out and should be followed by all parties.
In all of the comments here, no-where do I see any mention of *_conclusive proof_* that the "noise" that exists on all usb interfaces even causes problems that are audible. Yes, computers are noisy devices, that is a given. Has anyone actually checked to see if this noise causes a problem that can truly be *_heard_* on stereo equipment, at the speakers? It's just a question.
@@tomterrific9459 that's what I'm confused by. USB is sending a digital signal. It may be degraded by noise, but unless you live next to an unshielded MRI, the information will reproduce exactly the same.
I think the issue people are referring to has to deal with the connection to the DAC itself affecting the output audio signal, not the input signal being noisy because that shouldn't matter.
A good DAC should solve all this problems. That is literally what it is designed for.
@@tomterrific9459 Amir over at Audio Science Review has done some testing related to this question, I believe whe he looked at USB cables. If memory serves it makes a difference in audible ranges when DAC are designed correctly to handle said situations. One thing that was clear is all the aftermarket stuff such as what Audio Quest sells makes zero difference.
Isolation transformers and Line filters; on high tech digital gear? Sounds like a road us AV guys have been down before. Whaddayou know what's old is new again!
Audio science review has shown that galvanic isolators don't help the signal at all. If someone has data to support it then I would like to see it. The DAC should be properly designed to avoid these problems that a band aid is supposed to fix.
ASR is a cult like forum , stay away .
They measure instead of listening and make their assumptions based on measures not listening tests.
Their assumptions and thought process are wrong .
@Douglas Blake Golden ears are what you are listening with not oscyloscopes and multi meters...
Most of attempts of "measuring " performance are out of context and not considering components , room, specific cables that all play role in audio reproduction and these combined aspects can not be measured .
ASR is great for this group of people , mostly engineers who must have black on white evidence of anything to form their opinion or all else is just Voo Doo, snake oil, placeebo and other low excuses.
Start listening and spend time on working on your critical listening skills so you can believe them heard thru your ears....
@Douglas Blake Some fools from ASR like cults would look at measurements and buy, sure you can look at some specs but only listening test gives you proper perspective .
Read Henry Low below.
Excuse me, Law.
I have a M1 Macbook / Audirvana with USB Audioquest Jitterblocker and test it against a dedicated streamer like Bluesound node and didn't hear any difference.
A proper DAC will filter out noise. I have the Schiit Bifrost with built in precision clocks and audio designated USB port.
The Schiit is not going to isolate a noisy PC, sorry to say. Try with a proper streamer and hear the difference.
@@Fluterra Actually, it does. So do Chord products. And they do it well. I own both. It's called Galvanic Isolation
@@Fluterra you say this because you auditioned the Bifrost then realized that it doesn’t isolate computer noise? how did you come to that conclusion?
I’ve had the node2 and the paradigm Link streamers, both devices took away soundstage in comparison to PC-Bifrost then Vidar amp
@@Fluterra You're wrong on that. The BiFrost 2 has Schiit's Unison USB, which is completely galvanically isolated. Noise is a non-issue.
@@TheGamerUnknown Galvanic isolation is only one of many types of noise. There's a reason why companies like NAGRA use more than 20 power supplies in their DACs.
Schiit has great marketing and sounds good for the price they charge.
As long as the noise is outsider the audio band there is no issue. AM radios are excellent at demodulating noise to the audio band.
It is often not outside the audible band however. In my case, the moment I boot up something intensive (a game or other application) I immediately get a high-pitched shrill coming from my speakers - both loud and within the audible band.
I used a cheap raspberry pi as a streamer to fix it.
a 15 dollar external USB soundcard with optical output would have done the same
@@Harald_Reindl excellent point. Using a balanced signal path or isolation transformer will often solve the issue as well. Lots of audio noise is due to sharing the same reference level and the conversion of noise current through some common impedance to a noise voltage.
A lot of Bs in these comments here. Modern computers and modern DACs do not have any noise problems. At all. PCs and MACs are used in studios, and i mean EVERY studio in the world and they do not have any problems at all. Modern computers use USB audio 2.0 and you need to use ASIO aka bit perfect output. I have kinda cheap DAC on a kinda bad and old laptop but still on my hifiman anandas and THX AAA amp it is dead silent. I can lift the volume so high that an drum kick literally makes my ears bleed and still no noise issues at all. Problem comes if your computer/electrical system has some fatal fails in the first place.
They talking about background noise. You can upgrade your system isolating noise that you dont hear it now on max vol. After doing that, you gonna get more black, cleanner background and overall clarity will be better.
I thought most USB input DACs have filtering for computer noise... It has been shown bu Amir from Audio Science Review quite conclusively. He specifically tested highly priced usb isolators against dac filtering. No difference.
Very few come with proper galvanic isolation. I have a ~$480 SONCOZ DAC. My PC barfs so much power out of every port, it was very audible when I started up a game or anything more intensive.
@@TheGamerUnknown that's true same problem with the Chord Mojo connected to my Mac Pro via USB... added a Gustard U16 digital interface between the Mac and the Mojo and problem solved.
@@TheGamerUnknown i was planning on buying this SONCOZ dac based on price i presume it is the SGD1 but after reading this comment i might steer away from it
@@pappo666 It's overall a good DAC. I was just trying to point out this is a problem even on "midrange" equipment - not just junk/b-tier stuff.
I'm not sure what else in the price range would offer isolation. The BiFrost does, but it's very colored and also more expensive.
@@TheGamerUnknown might save up and get the Topping A90 i think its called or the DENAFRIPS ARES II R2R DAC that i originally was planning but told is "Totally overkill" want that sexy DSD support that Schiiit refuse to implement
Stupid question maybe but here it is: I use an Apple Air3 to stream music from Spotify to my headphone and I have placed an audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt usb dac between my headphone and my IPad. Have I still that noise?
I stream also music from my IPad using WiFi to my Marantz streamer receiver. Is there a problem ?
If I understand it well even with the MacBook there’s a problem.
I hadn’t heard of this problem.
Thanks in advance
Ludo
Toslink. Light flashes are very “quiet”.
Get a proper source. A fanless transport. Maybe something like the Silent Angel Munich M1T.
lol Looks like Dust Off has adopted Coca-Cola's tactics of product placement.
Generally with no setup whatsoever, portable devices such as phones and tablets tend to be way better sources than full-size laptops/computers.
I hear more punch from music when using mac and audirvana.
I just avoid hooking up computers and stream from a dedicated streamer. Not an streamer with DAC or a DAC with streamer, just a streamer and a dac.
@Douglas Blake A streamer only does a dedicated job, optimized for audio. A computer with software is like driving on a circuit with a city bus, where the streamer is a sports-car.
use a usb-to-somethingelse converter (x-spdif?), like many in the market, and the problem is solved....and never NEVER use +V from pc into dac, just the 0V... change how your usb interface work