Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

Tom Petty does a great live jam called Two Men Talkin’ that seems to be a tribute to Grateful Dead - do you know what is the original Grateful Dead jam this is based on?

https://youtu.be/HU9VBQBFQ_w

Of course. While I never heard the Tom Petty song until I listened given the link you provided, I can instantly recognize the music. While completely different lyrically, musically this is the Grateful Dead’s "The Other One".

You can hear a Grateful Dead - The Other One, from 9/28/72 (any date would do for sake of this comparison) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72iVSo6iXz8

@shadorne   First , I have enjoyed your knowledge you share here on agon . I am curious as to how you gained so much knowledge pertaining to digital audio ? My apologies to the op for this side step . I am just curious as to some of the more knowledgable participants back stories. Thanks, Mike 

The Yggdrasil has a very good S/PDIF receiver, the AK4113. Same one I use. The results should be stellar with any good low-jitter source. Unfortunately, you are using very poor S/PDIF cables. See my cable jitter plots here:http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154425.0

@audioengr

Hi Steve. I did have a look at your web page with the measurements of different cables. Nice work on your part.

Note that the Belden 1694A I use with RCA is because the Oppo does not have a BNC output option. It does have optical, but I’m not using it (with the Oppo, I am using optical with the cable box).

Anyway, what is your opinion of using USB in the following configuration:
Gateway NV79 > Belkin e129760-c usb > Yggdrasil

Should USB produce better results than the Belden 1694A coax?

Should there be improvement if I were to switch the optical from my cable box to the Oppo? (note that according to Schiit, AES/EBU is best to the Yggy, followed by coax) I only have AES/EBU out from my Emotiva. I also recall reading from Georgehifi that some type of glass optical is best, which I’m also not using.

@gdhal 

That would be it “The other one”. Petty played Friend of the Devil live often also. Nearly every musician is a fan of Jerry Garcia - no denying tremendous talent.

@maplegrovemusic 

I have college degrees in engineering and physics. Don’t use any of it for work but I remember stuff and read up on audio regularly. I was also in AES Audio Engineering Society for many years. Time Series Analysis used in Geophysics is exactly the same mathematics as digital audio and I took courses just on that! I studied atmospheric physics in depth too but I better stop there... as nobody likes to hear rational discussion on that topic which has become a new cult religion.

@gdhal

Another advantage of upsampling redbook is on a ladder resistor network DAC or multi-bit DAC. Upsampling with Roon or another software should shift ghosts much higher in frequency - where the ghost frequencies can act a bit like random noise which can actually help linearize the DAC response. Of course the ghosts are ultimately filtered out by the final filter but not until after they have helped improve linearity.

The way to think of this is that the high frequencies force the DAC to use a wildly different bank of resistors on nearly every sample or at a minimum with much more variety of network choice than would be used if there was only low frequency CD redbook data - this means individual resistor network non-linearities are converted to uncorrelated noise which is orders of magnitude less audible!

Here is the full theory - in fact the author claims this is the primary benefit of upsampling!

http://www.mlssa.com/pdf/Upsampling-theory-rev-2.pdf