The way EDO works when selecting the 192 digital out will use less memory and will result in less processing going on. (please note that this output will do all sample rates up to and including 192, not JUST 192). What Triode has done here COULD have been done with the original S/PDIF driver (and IS done in TT3.0). Triode has just chosen to bundle the changes in the way the driver is used with the new driver, as far as I can tell there is nothing different in the new driver other than support for 192. The differences are all in the way the driver is used.
Are these differences going to affect sound? Maybe. First off it depends very much on how sensitive a DAC is to whats going on with the input. Some are quite sensitive to jitter in the input, noise, reflections etc. Others are fairly insensitive to this. (I have yet to find a DAC that is COMPLETELY insensitive to what's happening on the input) (all this of course is assuming the the bits are all getting across without errors) I don't think anybody has a complete definitive explanation of what's going on, but there are some speculations. My theory is that most of the changes to the S/PDIF signal are coming about because of ground plane noise. There is a perception amoungst a lot of people that a ground plane is a large equipotential (same voltage everywhere) system, this is far from the truth. The impedance of a ground plane is NOT zero, its not a lot, but it is still there. A digital system like the Touch has all kinds of high frequency currents flowing all over the place through the ground plane, the impedance of the plane is enough to cause voltage differences to develope on the plane due to those currents flowing through it. Everything on the board is going to be affected by this noise to some degree. Digital logic IS affected by it, but in most cases it's not great enough to cause any issues. Where it becomes an issue are things like the local oscillators, the recloking flop, DAC chip etc. For S/PDIF output, the two most critical parts are the local oscilators and the reclocking flop. This noise can cause increased jitter on the clock and is also directly injected as noise onto the output. I have actually measured this ground plane noise. I built a simple device that detects and amplifies the noise and sends it to a spectrum analyzer. I can actually see changes in this ground plane noise with changes in what is going on in the Touch. I'm in the process of building a much more sensitive ground plane analyzer, sometime this summer I hope to have it up and running and can do some better tests. Of course then you have to do correlations between this ground plane noise and what changes this makes in SOUND at the output of a DAC. That is a whole different kettle of fish. This is going to be hampered by the way that different DACs will deal differently with any changes. So the upshot is that yes I have actually measured real electrical changes in the Touch due to these types of changes, these changes have the possibility that they may cause audible changes, whether they do has not been determined. If they due cause an affect, that affect will almost certainly be different or non-existent for different DACs. Can I personally hear the difference? On some DACs yes and on some no. On the ones that I can hear the difference it's not a huge night and day difference. John S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=94855 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
