from what I read, this helps on paper, but does not help the sound
16/44 is good enough - CD quality should be ok
donĀ“t believe Amazon HD is all real-remastered highrez files at the moment
I believe itāll be decoded on the computer without exclusive mode (though I may be wrong there), but I believe it will get sent over the USB at the higher rate PCM. And since decoding is a purely mathematical operation there should be no difference.
There is no way to tell for sure on the SDAC, since I have no way of determining what signal itās receiving.
Someone with a DAC that displays what itās receiving could confirm.
Sometimes setting your dac in Windows can improve the sound because of windows and how it passes through the volume mixer compared to asio or wasapi which set the bit depth and sample rate to what is played and it bypasses windows audio. If you use Windows directsound (aka not asio or wasapi) what sample rate and bit depth you set will be locked to those rates and upsampled by windows
You are correct that there shouldnāt be a difference, but sometimes this does improve the sound depending on the USB implementation of the dac and how windows decides to screw with the sound
I can with the SMSL SU-8 it is displayed
I honestly havenāt looked at the windows audio stack in a long time.
Upsampling can obviously impact audio quality, as could mixing, but Iād be surprised if the latter werenāt very well implemented in windows at this point. I know they have some very good sound engineers in the DX and Windows teams whose job it is to ensure this.
I guess itās theoretically possible for windows to induce additional jitter into something itās streaming over a USB connection, but it would have to try pretty hard. The nature of USB2 means that the client/DAC has to buffer at least two USB packets, and Iād expect they buffer significantly more than that, so windows would have to significantly delay audio going out to the device, and I wouldnāt expect it to do that.
Donāt get me wrong I wish Amazon would use exclusive mode and client side decoding, but I doubt itās a night and day difference, I occasionally find myself restarting a song on Amazon Music because I donāt like the way it sounds, and discover it didnāt play the 96/24 version, but Iām not about to claim I could pick out the difference between the 44/16 and 96/24 versions in a blind test.
Windows DirectSound API so polished for the most part, but there are still some issues that persist with it that causes some degradation of quality. Also by bypassing directsound you are bypassing volume control, so you donāt lose quality to digital volume as well
Itās not, but it does sound a bit better
What you are more likely hearing is a potentially different master for a high res version, so it would make sense if itās fairly noticable. Also it depends on how Amazon handles the 44.1 vs higher res streaming
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how does this compare to the enog 2 pro
Itās a bit less technically impressive, but somewhat close, and does have usb so thatās a bonus. I would personally go for the enog 2 pro if you have the extra budget and donāt need usb
is usb better than optical?
would it go well with an atom
So it all depends on implementation, there can be good and bad optical and good and bad usb.
Yeah would be a solid pairing
I have both, and I personally like how the ENOG2 sounds better.
I am interested in the ENOG2. How better it sounds?
Hello, I have a question about how to change my default format in windows to a lower bit depth using this DAC. Iām running it via USB in driverless USB 2.0 mode and outputting via XLR-3pin balanced to a THX AAA 789. When I try to change my default windows audio format, my only options are all 32 bit; from 44100hz to 384000hz, but only in 32bit. Iād actually prefer to listen to most things on my pc in 16bit. How would I allow myself to change to a lower bit depth using this DAC?
Also, I have already tried running in USB 1.0 mode using a driver and still, my only options were 32 bit but from 44100hz to 96000hz.
Hi! Welcome to HFGF! Iām not sure why you only see 32-bit options. I think your best fix is to find a driver for the SDAC. But TBH, Iām not sure you need to worry about it. The 16 or 8 bits Windows adds over a 16 bit signal are just 0s that shouldnāt affect the quality at all. Also, this should only matter if youāre routing your audio through Windows Audio Mixer. If youāre using a music program (and most games usually) that have an exclusive output mode, the signal should be at whatever bit and sample rate the original file is.
Is the Bifrost 2 a good/great update over the SDAC?
Hello everyone, I recently received this DAC and tried running a fully balanced setup with my amp, but have been having a lot of issues.
Before the DAC I was running the amp straight through my onboard audio off of my motherboardās 3.5mm to dual RCA and outputting through with a balanced cable to my headphones. This ran well and sounded quite nice.
Now that Iāve hooked up the DAC to my amp with dual XLRs and running the dac to my computer with the provided USB, the sound quality dipped?
I have to increase the volume to get same levels of loudness and the āRealtek HD Audio Manager and the Soundblaster X-Fi MB3ā that I use to be able to use to fine tune my music with their audio enhancers and EQ are not picking up my USB DAC as an audio source, so I canāt use them anymore.
What am I doing wrong here, I thought running fully balanced with an external dac would have beneficial effects on my sound quality, not depreciate it
Which amp do you have?
From your PC you should raise the volume to 100% (98% as some people like). And control the volume with the amp.
To use EQ you might need to download additional software like the EQ apo.
From what you said you may have used some eq and some kind of software boost. XLR has more voltage than regular RCA ( It also depends on the circuit, for example, the RCA input from the RNHP have more volume gain than the XLR).
I am using the Loxjie P20 Balanced Amp
And yes, I have my PC volume raised to max and just altering the volume through my amp