That USB audio quality goes well beyond data transmission can be a tough adjustment for anyone fixating on the ones and zeros with a “bits are bits” mindset. We’ve already seen from DAC designers like Wavelength Audio’s Gordon Rankin, inventor of asynchronous USB DAC connections, that 1) a USB audio connection can drop packets and 2) that those packet drops aren’t trivial to formally measure. Digital audio’s time-sensitive data transmission uses Isochronous mode where CRC correction doesn’t get a run. Print jobs and hard-drives use Bulk Mode’s CRC correction. This doesn’t prevent one of the most common misconceptions about digital audio transmission from living it large in the mainstream: that USB audio connections come with in-built error correction.
The latter is a new pair of jeans the former, those same jeans after several washes when some of the dye has been washed away. I’ve done this experiment too many times to count: USB tethered to a DAC, a Macbook sounds micro-dynamically more rigid and more tonally stonewashed than most dedicated network streamers. Just as a lesser-quality grinder’s inconsistent particle size can reduce the likelihood of a proper extraction in the espresso machine, a consumer-grade PC’s higher levels of jitter and electrical noise will reduce the audible capabilities of the DAC to which it is connected via USB. Digital audio experts talk of how a USB audio connection’s jitter (data timing) and electrical (not acoustic) noise carriage can impact sound quality. Our ones and zeroes are like coffee beans in that they require more than cursory handling. Similarly, a DAC – the machine that converts digital to analogue – isn’t immune to upstream changes. Experienced baristas will tell you that grind quality has a much greater impact on an espresso’s flavour and texture than the espresso machine. Theoretically, yes, but reality has other ideas. To produce an espresso, a machine forces water through ground coffee to extract the flavour previously locked inside the bean.
A cursory glance at a handful of YouTube videos makes it look easy. With the Phoenix added to the Aries Mini, we can push SPLs higher on Scary Monsters without increasing the risk of a Frippertronics-induced headache - a delta that mirrors the qualitative differences between Scary Monsters’ harder-sounding 1992 Ryko remaster and Parlophone’s 2017 superior redo.Ī streaming-capable digital audio system is a lot like home-made espresso. Why does this matter to Music-First Audiophiles – those of us who get our kicks from music and its attendant sound but who don’t always dig gear for its own sake? The answer is surprisingly simple. This helps tenderise, just so, Fripp’s guitar sear. Microdynamics lose some stiffness to sound more elastic in their snapback. The Innuos unit infuses the Bowie album with greater soundstage depth. Wiry.Īnd yet inserting an Innuos Phoenix US re-clocker (US$3149) between the AURALiC and the Kii Remote tells us that Scary Monsters doesn’t have to sound quite so nervous and tense that a better-defined illusion of front-to-back space between Bowie’s vocal and Fripp’s guitar can exist. The sound of Fripp and Bowie through this hifi system is nothing short of arresting. Supplying the digital audio stream is an AURALiC Aries Mini (US$599, discontinued) that, when connected to the Kii Remote’s USB input, sees the ones and zeroes flow into each loudspeaker’s D/A converters over Ethernet wire. I’ve been reminding myself of Scary Monsters’ high tensile combination of art and pop with a Kii Three loudspeaker system.
Listen intently to the album on a decent hi-fi system and you’ll not miss the King Crimson founder’s “Applied Frippertronics”: guitar sounds routed through a twin-tape-machine delay that tears at the very fabric of songs like “Fashion”, “It’s No Game Pt.
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