I'm the one that gave that report on the touch S/PDIF output. I am a beta tester and have taken one apart and examined it very thoroughly and have a good idea of how the S/PDIF output works. I have done extensive listening between the touch and stock SB3 and a modified SB3. I have not done the modifications to the touch (yet!) The SBs were run into several good DACs, some which had "reclocking" and some which did not.
I'm also a DAC designer and have a pretty good understanding of the technical issues involved, if people are REALLY interested I can cover some of the more detailed technical issues involved. In order to do this I would like real interest in the subject because I would wind up spending many hours writing it all down, its not short or simple. And to make it more interesting there is still a lot we don't know about WHY certain technical aspect causes particular sonic signatures. So there is still a fair amount of "it seems to be this but we are not really sure" BTW the modifications I was talking about above are replacing the SB crystals with very low jitter oscillators. Even when feeding a DAC using the infamous Sabre DAC chip, which has what is supposedly one of the best ASRC implementations the SB3 with the low jitter oscillators sounds quite a bit better than the stock SB3. The stock touch is in between these two. On a DAC with out any form of reclocking (Crystal receiver driving DAC chips directly) but with very good analog stage, the difference is even bigger. On the subject of S/PDIF in general, I despise it, I consider it one of the worst things ever foisted on the general public. The RIGHT way to use a SB is have low jitter oscillators right next to the DAC chips and feed those to the SB in place of its local crystals, this is what I do in my own personal DAC, it works extremely well. As was mentioned in this thread the best approach would be to build a DAC with the SB interface hard coupled in so no S/PDIF etc. This is definitely doable with the touch, nobody is doing it commercially, but it might just happen in the future. John S. -- JohnSwenson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=67711 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
