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USB reclocker pecking order?

Opinions on what the pecking order, best market options are for USB reclockers to a DAC via fiber optic or coax SPDIF? I've seen comments on the Hi Face (~$180), the Hiface EVO (~$500) and the OffRamp (~$800) Had the MusicStreamer II for a while but as I improved the music server my modded Adcom DAC won out for musical ease.
I've stripped my PC music server into a lean, sweet kernel streaming machine (6.7 on windows user experience rating), but I can still hear edge/grit in the highs on various sound card SPDIF sources from my PC that I don't get direct from CD source.

Is there any clear winner for $500 or less that would make a difference at 48Khz? Or am I possibly picking the wrong priority to resolve?
128x128davide256
koegz
317 posts
 
I am using a DCS Debussy dac with a fanless silent music server through a ubs cable. Using Media center 15 and flac. Anyone have experiance with a clock added? Is there a true improvement?
davide256's avatar
davide256 OP
399 posts
 
hmm, I see there is an asynch USB product for SPDIF out from Musical Fidelity, "V-LINK - USB To SPDIF Converter" that supports coax and optical SPDIF thats supports up to 96Khz. Anyone played with it yet? Price point ($169) is right for something thats likely to be obsolescing technology a year from now.
larry_s
128 posts
 
I'm very skeptical of the marketing mumbo jumbo for the V-Link. The whole point of asynchronous USB is so the target (DAC) doesn't not have to recover the clock from the data stream. This is why is it works so well compared to S/PDIF. With S/PDIF you have cable issues and variable frequency clocks on the DAC that help create jitter. So, anything that uses S/PDIF is flawed by design compared to what asychronous USB end-to-end provides.
cbw723
89 posts
 
Larry, while I agree with you in principle, the current reality is that a lot of people have DACs that don't have async USB, or don't have USB input at all. For those people, a converter allows them to get sound out of their computer, and a good converter allows them to get better sound. The growing number of USB to SPDIF converters on the market attests to the demand for these products, though I do think that over time the need for them will diminish.

What I'd really like to see would be some ethernet to USB or SPDIF converters (but that might require a layer of software that would make the products less convenient).
larry_s
128 posts
 
Cbw - I agree. The adapters make it easy to connect any PC to a S/PDIF DAC. I was going to also mention in my previous post that people worry about jitter instead of "do they like what they hear?". Anything past that I stay away. Too many people think their recollection of music they heard seconds, minutes or even days previously is accurate, but it's been proven many times that it's not.
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