Seems like a Frankenstein idea.If you need balanced, I would just get a DAC with balanced outputs.
Just asking I'm not hardcore audiophile, is there a sound sonic difference between a balanced and unbalanced outputs?
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Review and Measurements of Topping D10 DAC
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Just asking I'm not hardcore audiophile, is there a sound sonic difference between a balanced and unbalanced outputs?
Rather than writing a few thousand words and pictures to explain, I'll just say "no" for most practical consumer applications. The topic has been debated endlessly, of course, and IME one who decides balanced is better will not be satisfied with less whether it really matters or not. And there are those cases (exceptions) when it does actually matter, and thus everyone feels they must also be exceptional, so the beat goes on.
Achieving true balanced (differential) operation by combining the output of two independent DACs would be a very daunting task as the matching (amplitude and phase, over frequency and all signal conditions) must be very tight to provide good common-mode rejection. I wouldn't try it, but then I am a simple engineer, not an audiophile well-versed in magical combinations and contraptions that seem to have little basis in normal physics.
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JLan08
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Agreed, was't the best idea.
JLan08
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I think the simple answer is that it's difficult (expensive) to design and implement a balanced circuit that actually improves things without making other things worse. However, in a well implemented design, there is a benefit to balanced interconnects.
How much difference you see in your specific application would depend on how challenging of an environment your equipment lives in, in terms of electromagnetic noise. If, for example, your interconnect cable between DAC and preamp is only a 12 to 18 inches, and there are no power cables running in parallel to to the interconnect cable, and no large magnetic fields interacting with the interconnects, then you are probably better off using a single-ended interconnect with simple circuits on either end. But if your DAC is across the room from your pre-amp, and the room presents a challenging electromagnetic environment, then balanced would be beneficial.
But... if your equipment has balanced connections available, then it is very tempting to use them, whether you need it or not. This is my problem. In fact if I want to use single ended connections, I have to use a modified balanced cable, because XLR ports are all I have on my Dynaudio powered monitors.
JLan08
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Not that difficult if that was the initial design goal, though does usually require more components and thus higher cost, but implementing it after the fact is challenging and arguably wouldn't improve anything (depending upon the implementation) since you are starting from independent single-ended sources that could have presumably already been corrupted by common-mode noise and the distortion from the initial single-ended circuits.
Agree with the rest of your post, FWIWFM. You can run single-ended across the room without problems most of the time but are more susceptible to noise pick-up. For consumer audio, IME the single biggest benefit is providing the ability to break ground loops, and there are other ways to do that.
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Bringing this back to the Topping D10, a bit of an annoyance when using this on my Nvidia Shield TV.
Every time there is more than 5 seconds of silence it seems like the Shield stops outputting any sound. In turn this will cause the D10 to relay to click and the display to read “- - -“. But if you move the cursor or play another song the relay will click on sync up and display the sample rate and the device works as expected.
Fortunately, this was never my intended use. But I’d be concerned about number of cycles this relay will endure if this it’s primary usage. And it is darn annoying listening to it click away and cut off the first milliseconds of each sound.
My non relay equipped Sabaj DA3 works much better for this application.
Every time there is more than 5 seconds of silence it seems like the Shield stops outputting any sound. In turn this will cause the D10 to relay to click and the display to read “- - -“. But if you move the cursor or play another song the relay will click on sync up and display the sample rate and the device works as expected.
Fortunately, this was never my intended use. But I’d be concerned about number of cycles this relay will endure if this it’s primary usage. And it is darn annoying listening to it click away and cut off the first milliseconds of each sound.
My non relay equipped Sabaj DA3 works much better for this application.
Planning to buy a android media box to replace the laptop an create a stand alone platform to play my audio files.
Basicly these android media boxes are quite cheap esspecialy if you can use them with your phone remoted controlled (foobar2000 + Monkymote).
Are there any reasons not to buy such android media box let say for quality reasons like compatible issiues with dsd files and or hick-ups in the sound stream etc. etc.
Basicly these android media boxes are quite cheap esspecialy if you can use them with your phone remoted controlled (foobar2000 + Monkymote).
Are there any reasons not to buy such android media box let say for quality reasons like compatible issiues with dsd files and or hick-ups in the sound stream etc. etc.
Quality and
Quality and Android OS implementation are all over the map with inexpensive Android devices. Nvidia Shield is well supported and widely used, but as I noted works better with my Sabaj DA3.
So my stream issue I discussed may not exist with a different box or it could arguably be worse. I’d probably use an inexpensive Win10 Cherry Trail device, but that is because of familiarity. If you like Unix derivatives I think I’d go with a Rasberry Pi.
Quality and Android OS implementation are all over the map with inexpensive Android devices. Nvidia Shield is well supported and widely used, but as I noted works better with my Sabaj DA3.
So my stream issue I discussed may not exist with a different box or it could arguably be worse. I’d probably use an inexpensive Win10 Cherry Trail device, but that is because of familiarity. If you like Unix derivatives I think I’d go with a Rasberry Pi.
Android is actually not the best platform for sound reproduction. IMHO you would do much better, and probably cheaper as well, if you go for Volumio on Raspberry Pi. You can contol it with BubbleUPnP on your Android phone.
I am also considering the PI path, because running a long USB from my macbook pro is not exactly an elegant solution.
I have also read that, Allo Digione - a hat to Raspberry Pi, seems to produce good results. But I haven't tried it / nor any Pi as streamers. Dunno if it is easy to implement.
It claims COAX would produce better sound than USB, of which I am doubtful.
I don't know about Allo Digione, I'm using Topping D10 with Rasspberry Pi 3 B+ running Volumio. Volumio is easy to setup and runs with no issues. This solution works very well if you have your music collection stored on NAS accessible via UPnP media server.
You may want to check my thread about that here:
https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/my-review-of-topping-d10.3303/
P.S. SPDIF over coax would produce the same sound quality as USB if implemented properly although those two shouldn't really be compared as they transport the digital signal in a very different way.
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