Firewire to SPDIF

Cerrot,
I have finally set up my firewire Solo. is there a breakin period ?
Compared to my Classe CDT-1 transport the sound is detailed but seems to have a little less of musicality and sounds a little hard. this was after 30mins of listening to them. it is definitely better than the trends UD10 in details though.
i will do a more detailed check sometime this week again.

Compared to what you have experienced the other culprit could be the Firewire card...

setup

laptop: Dedicated Dell D600 with minimum XP and 1GB ram
Firewire Card: Compaq with dual 6 pin out
Fire wire cable: 9 inch long 6 pin to 6 pin cable (from an old External HDD)

Solo Digital out via 1m Nordost Moonglo to a Monarchy Dip Classic
Monarchy dip is connected to a Reimyo DAP777 via DHL 110ohm XLR. rest of the setup is a Leben CS600 and merlin TSM MMe.

My solo sounded good out of the box. I don't recall a difference after break in. I run my firewire streight into the gateway motherboard (Intel w/southbridge chipset). I don't use a firewire card. Are you using the power supply for the solo or taking power through the firewire interface? I am not using the power supply and feel w/o power supply, it sounds better (on my rig). I use the same digital cable inthe the DIP. I'm not familiar with the Compaq card. Is that a PCMI to firewire card? I may try a different firewire cable as well. I may also try a new firewire cable instead of the old one (not sure why, I just would).

Arj,

Pls also check your buffer size in the MAudio control panel. I use 512. Sync source is internal and spdif output source is set to mixer. I don't have the "disable direct monitoring" box checked. I am using WASAPI and JRiver 13.

Arj,

One more-from Maudio Manual
IMPORTANT: The FireWire Solo comes with a high-quality six-pin to six-pin FireWire cable. We strongly
suggest you use this cable, or one of equal quality, for optimum audio performance. If your computer is
equipped with a four-pin interface, you will need to use the included four-pin to six-pin FireWire cable.
Note that the FireWire Solo requires a six-pin FireWire connection in order to supply bus power; if you have
a four-pin connection you will need to use the supplied power adapter.

Cerrot,
Thanks a lot for the info

I am using a PCMCIA adaptor with 6 pin output. it appears to be thicker and of better quality, but will try the other cable as well
since a PCMCIA bus does not carry power i am using external power.

regarding the settings I actually increased the buffer to 1024, bypassed the mixer (since it is a winxp),

I was using foobar...but will try out J River as well !

will try to change it to your setup and revert back

Thanks again for the tips an the time taken to find the above info..really appreciate it