M-Audio Firewire 410 as an outboard DAC

Hi,

I have been using a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Sound Card together with Winamp 5.02 and ASIO Plug-ins for a few months now. I am pleased with the sound quality I am achieving.

One of the projects I have planed, is to increase sound quality by improving my DAC. I was researching external DACs but have come across the various 'M-Audio Super DAC' customisation projects on this board.

Does anyone have any experience with the M-Audio Firewire 410 used as an outboard DAC for a HiFi System?

I assume that I can use WinAmp ASIO plugins to drive sound via a powered Firewire port to the M-Audio Firewire 410, which is in it self powered by Firewire. This would allow me to have my computer some distance from my HiFi System. The M-Audio Firewire 410 can then connect via analogue to my amplifier.

It would seem that the M-Audio Firewire 410 offers 192kHz stereo out. So would the Firewire 410 'Up-Sample' my 41.1 kHz MP3 (LAME 3.90.3 – Alt Extreme Presets) files to 192kHz? Would I get any increase in sound quality over my current set-up? Would the Firewire 410 get close to some of these 'Super DAC' customisations?

Any comments/suggestions?

 

Hardbord,

What are you using as a dac at the moment?,

2 things spring to mind, I feel it's need 192KHz ability Plus a firewire interface to enable it to function correctly

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.main&ID=5f35def5b4107998b11119907053a313

 

Wadia-miester,

Thanks for the response.

My aim here is to improve my audio replay from my PC. I am not concerned with providing an outboard DAC for my Rotel CD player at all. So maybe I missed phrased the question.

I am currently using the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Sound card, connected directly to my Rotel amplifier via analogue RCA connections. I supposed the question has two parts:

1) Are their any better 'PC Sound Cards', which will significantly improve my sound quality?

2) Having briefly read about 'Up-Sampling' and its quality improvements are there any solutions to up-sample a PC source?

I have briefly tried up sampling on my M-Audio Audiophile 2496, but it didn't work. However I seem to remember reading about some relationship between ASIO sampling rates & buffers, so I will have to do a bit more research.

The M-Audio Audiophile 2496 utilises the AKM AK4528VF 24bit/96kHz DAC. I am also seeing sound cards come out using The Wolfson WM8728 24/192kHz DAC. So it would be interesting to know what DAC chip the M-Audio Firewire 410 uses.

I also just had a look at the Apogee Mini-DAC. It has great reviews but is a big jump up in price. Has anyone got any experience of the sound quality compared between a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 & an Apogee Mini-DAC?

 

Harbord,

Domonic T is the man to ask here, he's a studio guy, and he runs the Apogee card.
Upsampling is a contensious issue, personaly I feel direct multipules of red book are better 'intergrated' as its not had to have spline interpolation. (88.2khz I find the best trade off)
Upsampling generally 'fleshes out' the sound' the odd problem of digitaliness is greatly reduced, more upper frequency details and ambience, though less drive and dynamics and life.
Does your current card support firewire?, can it give a digital signal out, then run it through an upsamler/SRC and back into the dac, Digital Village stock Behringer 1/2 U rack pro version for £170 Inc, it's pretty good, would be cheaper, and has selectable u/sampler rates to 108Khz, allowing you to maximsie you card cards potential.

http://www.dv247.com/invt/13553

The super dac is pretty good for a small outlay, although this is pretty good for the cash too, plus built in vol col/preamp

http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/

Hope that helps a bit

 

Bloody hell, those Behringer prices are expensive! Jusding from that, you pay far more in The UK than we do in Japan. Kurahzeee*.
My experience with the 2496 (also running through analogue outs into a Luxman integrated) is that it does provide good sound. TBH, the best upgrade I could think of right now is better sound deadening for the PC!
I am also looking quite closely at a Firewire DAC solution to use in a PC for the living room (that would feed into the main system and would possibly also be fed from an integrated cable / satellite digital tuner).


*maybe not so crazy, I guess we just get them shipped directly from the factory in China

 

The M-Audio Audiophile 2496 does have a coaxial S/PDIF I/O via a 15pin breakout connector. Not ideal, but I could connect to an outboard over-sampler / up-sampler and then on to a DAC an then to an integrated Amplifier. All of which would be a bit convoluted.

I think that the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 can up-sample to 96kHz by itself outputting to the S/PDIF I/O. To test this I would need an outboard DAC, perhaps something like the M-Audio SuperDAC?

Having a direct Firewire connection from my PC to the M-Audio Firewire 410, would make the Firewire 410 my soundcard. Thus the Firewire 410 is removed from all the internal 'noise' within a PC. In this configuration I would play music via WinAmp and ASIO drivers to the Firewire 410 and then analogue to my integrated amplifier.

As I said I looked at the Apogee Mini-DAC, which looks very interesting. An even more interesting option would be the Apogee Rosetta 200 (Available June '04). This would again connect the PC via Firewire, but has a built in power supply, hopefully of better quality than the Mini-DAC external PSU. However I have just been reading some reviews that suggest combining a Rosetta with a 'World Clock' to get better quality.

Of course all of this needs testing/proving, however it seems there is potential improvements here, if costly. However first up I need to improve the quality of my basic components such as Speakers and Amplifiers.

 

The issue that bugs me with this approach is the direct electrical connection between the computer and hifi. This is a conduit for the (significant) RFI produced by a PC to be fed into your amplifier. This is one reason that I use an optical connection from my Terratec soundcard into my SuperDAC (which also does CDP and in future also DVD duties).

It's worth noting in RFI terms that a PC would never ever pass the requirements with regard to interference that any piece of hifi gear must conform to for FCC and/or CE certification. PCs are classed as belonging in an office environment (which is less stringent), and they are not tested as a whole, but rather each component (motherboard, graphics card, sound card, hard disk, DVD drive, etc) is tested individually. Trying to get a PC-based product through EMC testing for a piece of entertainment equipment is phenominally difficult.

RF rant aside, the other issue concerning upsampling... One of the problems with many sound cards (usually motherboard ones, but some add in cards. Your Midiman is not among them though) is trying to STOP them from resampling everything to 48kHz.

Another issue with this is one that afflicts my setup, whereby you might be playing a 44.1kHz file, but then windows tries to alert you to something with one of its bongs and chimes, all of which are 48kHz. The DAC is then rather confused as to which sample rate it's trying to reproduce, and takes a moment to latch onto the 48kHz signal. A moment later that short windows sound ends, and it drops back to 44.1

 

Oh, and another interesting DAC that I've only just come across is the Xindak DAC-3. This has internal resampling to 24/96.

There is a new one for sale on ebay for under £300. For that money, it seems to offer remarkable design, with two toroidal transformers (presumably one for analogue, one for digital), and also balanced outputs. However, shipping from hong kong is almost £40, and you'll be liable for VAT and duty, so more like £400 all in.

The Xindak company also make an SACD player with Valve output stage, and silver "audiophile" fuses, 2A and 6A.

 

This is not a problem with my configuration, as I have TWO soundcards in my system. My default soundcard is on my Mobo, so all system sounds go to this & nowhere. WinAmp is my player of choice, I have configured ASIO plugins to use my M-Audio Audiophile 2496 and then out to my HiFi.

 

An interesting quote from the Van den Hul Web Site:
" Regarding optical fiber cables for digital audio and bandwidth. Although these exhibit a very high bandwidth and near perfect noise immunity by themselves, the bandwidth of the unavoidably extra involved optical transmitter and receiver parts (especially those used in common consumer devices) is one of the most important performance limiting factors. Others are: The optical power available, so-called modal dispersion, attenuation and connector transition losses.

Depending on the situation, though in many cases, coaxial SPDIF transfer is preferable if low jitter distortion replay is aimed at."

 

Regarding upsampling, download a player called Foobar 2000, enable the SSRC plugin in the preferences, and then in the properties of those preferences choose the sample rate. If you need more help with that, PM me.

You'll have to pay quite a lot to significantly better the Audiophile 2496, because like its closely related cousin the Terratec EWX 2496, they both share highly regarded AKM DAC chips which are regarded as musical, lively and smooth, and are used in the ART DI/O DAC.

 

Just in case there was any interest, I believe there is a new Firewire version of the M Audio Audiophile 24/96 available for just £200.

Seehere