Just got my SMSL SU-8 Dac and what Mon said is true. sounds clean and uncolored Listening to Simple Minds New Gold Dream sounds better and more correct now. its been a long journey to get here. But now with the 888 amp and SU8 DAC and Elex New Gold Dream sounds more correct and better than ever!
Kinda funny how music in the 80ās didnt require all this tech and cost and research to hear the music as the artist intended. Just a record recorded to tape and played on a walkman with Koss headphones lol. But of course, it didnt sound this good.
I re-installed my OS Win10. and Re-installed Foobar 2000. Got the AISO component installed AISOforAll. And installed the XMOS SU8 driver. Found 2 AISOās in the foobar output setting. the AISOforall didnt work, but the āUSB DAC AISOā worked fine. The XMOS driver reports AISO is active and running. And everything is sounding real good.
I started on the RCA inputs but then i switch over to XLR DAC to amp and i swear it bumped up the sound quality pretty noticeable, though Im sure people will think its placebo.
I messed with the settings, not sure what a PCM filter is, what does PCM stand for? It didnt seem to make much of a difference to the sound. I tried the Sound menu and same thing. Iāll have to test them out more thoroughly in the future. Volume i set to max.
The Su8 looks much better than in the videos i saw. looks the business in its silver metal case. And its heavy! i was surprised how heavy it was. The digital display looks cool. I got it set to report the frequency and when i played some 96hz U2 songs of experience album it reported the correct frequency! finaly. I set my DSD plugin in Foobar to 352.8khz and thats what it showed on the SU8!
I celebrated by buying Coldplay X&Y192khz/24bit, Tears for Fears Songs from the big chair 96khz/24bit and Radioheads Moon shaped pool 48khz/24bit. All of it reported the khz correctly on the SU8ās display.
Funny enough even though the radiohead album had the lowest khz it sounded the best lol. actually it was so intense i had to turn the volume down. its like it was coming out full throttle into my face. not sure if this is what the artist intended.
Unfortunately Amazon HD doest report anything higher than 24bit/48khz lol. neither does Tidal or Spotify, sigh
The worst thing about the dac is the blue lights. In the dark Itāll be a sightmare and I already hate blue light since I usually listen in dim settings when Iām chilling.
happy you like yours too
I had no problems at all in the last months with the SU-8 and THX AAA 789 combo from my W10 notebook running Foobar, Tidal Masters(with mqa over ifi xDSD) and Spotify Premium
on my wifes W10 home office pc with Tidal, Spotify Premium and Foobar running I had driver problems after the last Win update with our old SMSL M6 running as preamp to our 2.1 setup
the M6 driver had to be new installed - never had this kind of problems before and had to work it out yesterday for an hour or so
the driver for the M6 and ifi xDSD was gone in Foobar - could not pick them in the output menue
PCM stands for Pulse-code modulation and it is a common way of recreating audio. The filters are a different way of filtering out frequencies above our hearing, but they also affect transient response and all that jazz. They are pretty subtle so nothing to really worry about.
There are sound modes which more noticeably change the sound like tube or rich that you can mess around with.
Also regarding the xlr, the su8 does sound better out of its balanced outs because it was designed to be used out of the balanced outs therefore it had more care put into the balanced outs. Also itās got more volume with the balanced outs so thatās something to note
Also when you install xmos you install an asio specific to your su-8, so there is no need for asio4all which is for devices that do not have native asio support
Iāve been listening to mine for a couple of weeks,
I think I prefer it to my 49xx based DACās but I suspect itās just different.
I do like the filter selection, and itās interesting to listen to the differences, though mine just gets left on 1 when actually listening.
I spent all of 10 minutes messing with the EQ curves and just turned them off.
The volume control is the big win for me, the Elex is just too efficient for the Jot even on low gain, and turning down the volume on the DAC lets me turn up the volume on the Amp so itās at a more reasonable level.
Yeah the sound modes (it doesnāt actually affect the frequency response that much if I remember correctly) are something you are either going to leave on or off
Also yeah itās nice to have a volume control that wonāt affect the sound quality like a digital volume is helpful. I just wish it had a knob but thatās a minor gripe
The EQ is fairly noticeable, but subtle enough itās not in your face. They probably have to go that way to let it work well on a variety of amps.
The filters are more interesting, because none of them really have any impact below about 16KHz, itās subtle, but you can hear the difference in the transients between them.
I might be able to pick out fast vs slow in a blind test, but Iām not sure I could definitively describe one as better.
Have my Eddie Current ZDT Jr turning up next week, so itāll end up stationed with that for the short term.
Listening to Simple Minds New Gold Dream sounds better and more correct now. its been a long journey to get here. But now with the 888 amp and SU8 DAC and Elex New Gold Dream sounds more correct and better than ever!
and I already hate blue light since I usually listen in dim settings when Iām chilling.
