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Post by svart on Jul 12, 2016 8:24:03 GMT -6
I have one and love it! If my UFX allowed a second SPDIF or AES interface, I would buy another SvartBox. As it is, the only other digital interface I can use on the UFX is ADAT. If the SvartBox had an ADAT interface, like the 2192 did, I would get a second one and my convertor requirements would be satisfied for the foreseeable future. Too bad there's no inexpensive ADAT-to-SPDIF convertor. I looked into it once. It would be doable up to 48K (ADAT standard highest samplerate) but when moving to 96K SMUX (Fancy ADAT interleaving two 48K streams into one 96k stream) I would be forced to figure out how to mux down two data streams into a single interleaved stream. This is where things get really hairy for someone like me who doesn't have any kind of software/driver support. That's only one of the hurdles. The second of which is that ADAT standard has a VERY wide jitter allowance range. The jitter it will allow is up to 1nS.. That's almost 1000x what the nominal jitter for the clock on my ADC is. That also means that the Optogen and Optorec ICs (the ASIC chips with ADAT proprietary coding/decoding technology) are only guaranteed to those specs.. What the converter performance through something like that would be, is anyone's guess. I suspect it would be reasonable, but it wouldn't be much better than what most people have in their interfaces now, and I could never guarantee great performance, the very thing I spent a lot of time to design into my converters! |
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Post by LesC on Jul 12, 2016 12:53:18 GMT -6
I have one and love it! If my UFX allowed a second SPDIF or AES interface, I would buy another SvartBox. As it is, the only other digital interface I can use on the UFX is ADAT. If the SvartBox had an ADAT interface, like the 2192 did, I would get a second one and my convertor requirements would be satisfied for the foreseeable future. Too bad there's no inexpensive ADAT-to-SPDIF convertor. I looked into it once. It would be doable up to 48K (ADAT standard highest samplerate) but when moving to 96K SMUX (Fancy ADAT interleaving two 48K streams into one 96k stream) I would be forced to figure out how to mux down two data streams into a single interleaved stream. This is where things get really hairy for someone like me who doesn't have any kind of software/driver support. That's only one of the hurdles. The second of which is that ADAT standard has a VERY wide jitter allowance range. The jitter it will allow is up to 1nS.. That's almost 1000x what the nominal jitter for the clock on my ADC is. That also means that the Optogen and Optorec ICs (the ASIC chips with ADAT proprietary coding/decoding technology) are only guaranteed to those specs.. What the converter performance through something like that would be, is anyone's guess. I suspect it would be reasonable, but it wouldn't be much better than what most people have in their interfaces now, and I could never guarantee great performance, the very thing I spent a lot of time to design into my converters! Thank you for looking into this, now I can give up on that idea. I have a simple home studio, so I'm thinking of simplifying my digital setup. After selling my Burl AD, I'm left with a UFX, the SvartBox DA-AD, and the DA in the Dangerous Source monitor controller. I'm considering selling all 3 and going with a Metric Halo LIO-8. That should give me all the analog ins and outs I'll need, and includes a monitor controller function with digitally-controlled analog volume control. All I have to do is wait for MH to come out with their promised USB/Windows interface, which will hopefully happen a bit before I die of old age. |
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DaveC
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Post by DaveC on Jul 12, 2016 13:37:22 GMT -6
I wonder if the following interface will work as USB/SPDIF link to the SvartBox? I think it's cheap enough to try.
miniStreamer
Thanks, Dave |
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DaveC
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Post by DaveC on Jul 12, 2016 13:40:07 GMT -6
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Post by svart on Jul 12, 2016 13:42:27 GMT -6
I wonder if the following interface will work as USB/SPDIF link to the SvartBox? I think it's cheap enough to try.
miniStreamer
Thanks, Dave This one? www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/ministreamerThat looks cool! I bought a 5$ USB interface from EBay that I was going to try to hack into a SPDIF/USB interface, but this one might work better. |
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DaveC
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Post by DaveC on Jul 12, 2016 13:48:19 GMT -6
That's the one, I missed the link the first time. MiniDSP makes a number of cool things I would like to try.
Thanks, Dave
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Post by svart on Jul 12, 2016 17:19:27 GMT -6
I looked at doing USB conversion, but the available chips are either rare, like that Tenor chip, or they are completely over designed with features (and therefor expensive) like the XMOS chips.
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Post by LesC on Jul 12, 2016 18:35:40 GMT -6
That's the one, I missed the link the first time. MiniDSP makes a number of cool things I would like to try. Thanks, Dave I had the MiniDSP Dirac for a while and it was quite nice, very high quality hardware and software. The miniStreamer and the USBStreamer look useful. Maybe they'll come out with a multi-channel USB-to-8 SPDIF interface, which would make a perfect companion to up to 8 SvartBoxes or other DA-AD units. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2016 9:47:07 GMT -6
Interesting stuff, this ministreamer, especially for the price. the Tenor solutions i saw until now were twice the price!
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Post by svart on Jul 26, 2016 12:26:33 GMT -6
So I bought a Ministreamer and it arrived. I'll try testing it out the next few days and I'll find a little case for it as well since it doesn't come with any kind of chassis/box.
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Post by popmann on Jul 29, 2016 15:48:59 GMT -6
Dude....I NEED one of those boxes....do let me know how much work it is to find a box (and is it buss powered or need a power supply?)....
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2016 2:28:46 GMT -6
The product webpage tells one of the applications for the miniStreamer is USB-powered amplifiers, so i am pretty sure it can be USB bus-powered...
I am quite excited what svart's testing will bring up, too...
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Post by wiz on Aug 29, 2016 17:36:59 GMT -6
So I bought a Ministreamer and it arrived. I'll try testing it out the next few days and I'll find a little case for it as well since it doesn't come with any kind of chassis/box. how did it fair? cheers Wiz |
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Post by svart on Aug 29, 2016 17:41:57 GMT -6
So I bought a Ministreamer and it arrived. I'll try testing it out the next few days and I'll find a little case for it as well since it doesn't come with any kind of chassis/box. how did it fair? cheers Wiz Give me a couple days and I'll have a full writeup! |
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Post by stratboy on Sept 29, 2016 4:51:32 GMT -6
Hi, Svart
Did you ever build the minidsp box?
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Post by svart on Sept 29, 2016 6:34:10 GMT -6
Hi, Svart Did you ever build the minidsp box? I never did find a box that it would fit in nicely. I started testing it, but got sidetracked. One thing I did get stuck on was that the Ministreamer seems to generate it's own SPDIF output to the DAC. Even with the ADC unplugged, the DAC stays locked to the Ministreamer, which means either it, or the computer are generating a clock for the SPDIF stream. This is not ideal, as it introduces a layer of clocking that's not intended. I lightly investigated working around it, but I couldn't find any information on it. I hope to get back around to it shortly, I could use the ministreamer and converter on a remote recording I need to do soon. |
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Post by stratboy on Sept 29, 2016 12:16:50 GMT -6
I found a box that looks like it will fit well. It took me two tries.I will post the details when I get home tonight.
Given the effort you put into clocking, I understand your concern. However, my Svartbox may turn out to be useable in my setup only with a hookup to USB, so I hope you can go ahead and build it out for a test, at least.
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Post by stratboy on Sept 29, 2016 19:23:01 GMT -6
Hi, Svart Did you ever build the minidsp box? I never did find a box that it would fit in nicely. I started testing it, but got sidetracked. One thing I did get stuck on was that the Ministreamer seems to generate it's own SPDIF output to the DAC. Even with the ADC unplugged, the DAC stays locked to the Ministreamer, which means either it, or the computer are generating a clock for the SPDIF stream. This is not ideal, as it introduces a layer of clocking that's not intended. I lightly investigated working around it, but I couldn't find any information on it. I hope to get back around to it shortly, I could use the ministreamer and converter on a remote recording I need to do soon. Hammond RP1060 works well. I also got a .dwg file from the minidsp manufacturer that shows more of the physical layout, if that would help. |
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Post by svart on Oct 31, 2016 7:48:45 GMT -6
OK, so I finally did a bunch of testing with the Ministreamer..
It works ok, when it works.
I kept having issues with it while trying to use it above 44.1K for some reason. It seems like the sound system wanted to share it with everything else even though I had set it for "do not share" in the driver settings. Once the DAW took control of the device, I could get A/D stream into the DAW, but no playback or monitoring from the D/A unless I was in 44.1K.
I could also not get any playback from any other source while the DAW was active, so I know it took control of the D/A. Once the DAW was closed, I could play back through the D/A at any sample rate setting.
However, when I set everything to 44.1K, I can play through the DAW and any media player with no issues. It seems that 44.1K is the default for system sounds, etc.
So it seems that the drivers are kinda iffy, and that "sharing" is still somewhat active and there is contention between the system playback and the DAW attempting control of the audio output stream. Even disabling the system sound devices did not help.
So while this works, and sounds good when it does, I was limited to 44.1K using the Ministreamer.
Other folks might not have the same problems as I did, but buyer beware.
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Post by svart on Jan 23, 2017 9:52:42 GMT -6
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Post by Johnkenn on Jan 23, 2017 17:07:11 GMT -6
I'd sell that shit for a royalty...sit back and sip margaritas...
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Post by phrazemaster on Aug 9, 2017 15:17:31 GMT -6
How about sticking some transformers in and calling it the ADironDAC. Sorry, I know this was almost 3 years ago but...HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! GOOD ONE!!! |
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Post by drsax on Jun 22, 2021 17:03:18 GMT -6
Resurrecting this thread to give svart more props on these converters. I’ve had my two Svartboxes disconnected for a couple years cuz I ran out of digital connections on my multi-UA Apollo rig. Finally hooked them back up today via the Apollo 8 ADAT connection (using an RME ADI4 DD and a slew of adapters) and bottom line... Svart’s converters still slay in 2021!! Beautiful sounding... deep, wide, clear, musical... and just SWEET!! Still loving these things. |
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Jun 22, 2021 17:14:19 GMT -6
Resurrecting this thread to give svart more props on these converters. I’ve had my two Svartboxes disconnected for a couple years cuz I ran out of digital connections on my multi-UA Apollo rig. Finally hooked them back up today via the Apollo 8 ADAT connection (using an RME ADI4 DD and a slew of adapters) and bottom line... Svart’s converters still slay in 2021!! Beautiful sounding... deep, wide, clear, musical... and just SWEET!! Still loving these things. It is to bad Savart didn’t market that thing better, of course if he did it would have been Lavry, Mytek money. From the limited time I heard it the thing is impressive as anything. |
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Post by drsax on Jun 22, 2021 17:35:36 GMT -6
Resurrecting this thread to give svart more props on these converters. I’ve had my two Svartboxes disconnected for a couple years cuz I ran out of digital connections on my multi-UA Apollo rig. Finally hooked them back up today via the Apollo 8 ADAT connection (using an RME ADI4 DD and a slew of adapters) and bottom line... Svart’s converters still slay in 2021!! Beautiful sounding... deep, wide, clear, musical... and just SWEET!! Still loving these things. It is to bad Savart didn’t market that thing better, of course if he did it would have been Lavry, Mytek money. From the limited time I heard it the thing is impressive as anything. True that... impressive indeed! |
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