Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

@debjit_g Totally agree on the usb galvanic isolation. What amazes me is so many of these off the shelf servers/streamers use usb off motherboards! How do they have the nerve to charge these prices for crap usb outputs, this is what gives usb bad name.

@sns welcome to the world of high-end audio. You will probably know this as well but the truth is the product will not sell through dealer markup if you can’t charge a minimum of 10x the price of cogs. Its all driven by sales and marketing - if folks are willing to pay for crappy usb output, the product will sell and companies to keep charging premium for nothing. Just look at the audio cable business.

In my books, price to performance ratio will always win and that is why I personally like companies who are actually trying to bring excellent value at a reasonable cost. Though its not always a determinant factor but looking at the inside of some products and one will quickly realize its value, assuming one is somewhat knowledgeable. This is one of the reason I became interested in the Musetec - its not a ground breaking design but as far as I can see is a well thought out one with quality parts, execution and price to boot.

@lordmelton if you really want to take the i2s over hdmi to its maximum level, take a look the Wireworld platinum series hdmi cables. Always have the shortest run possible from the DDC to the DAC. The i2s is the native interface to most dac chip (ESS and AKM) and what the USB board (Amanero or XMOS) inside the DAC does is to convert the async USB data stream to i2s signals.

At the Axpona show I just attended; Mojo Audio's owner was claiming I2S was never meant as an external input/output and that's why it isn't a standard. It was meant as an internal only connection not to exceed a few inches. This was heard by many people at the seminar he gave. Interesting how its evolving and how it's being used by some people.

Mojo Audio is absolutely correct. I2S is primarily meant for chip-to-chip connection which typically is few cm. The longer the traces the more it suffers signal integrity. However, I think the external connection that most are using with audio DDC/DAC combo throws away the clock and uses the dac's own clock to resample. In such case, the I2S is just passing the data stream over the pins and you always want the least shortest path. As I stated earlier, IMO i2s will only benefit cases where the dac doesn't have a good usb implementation and the server is too noisy. 

as for the standard or the lack of it, it has evolved into couple different ones - PS Audio, Rockna, Gustard. Most manufacturers are following PS audio and some, like Denafrips has configurable pins assignments.

Funny thing I still remember when I owned the PS Audio DS dac a while back (bought the DS from PS Audio when it was first released), I bought a Gustard DDC to use with it and which was following its own standard. It wasn't reconfigurable to PS Audio pin-out. I needed a custom hdmi cable to make them work together but no one would build me one. I finally had to DIY'ed my own cable but it did sound a little better and cleaner than the usb input but honestly at that time my diy server wasn't as optimized as it is now. It could have been a totally different outcome if I had experimented it today.

Here is the database of i2s devices