I’m not trying to oversell TOSLink, but I am trying to encourage people to try it since many don’t. The rules are a little different with the DS and retrying some things that didn’t work so well in the past might work better for you now. I’m encouraged that some are trying things they might not have before, but don’t give people grief because they do so and get the expected (or unexpected) result. Personally I didn’t expect the Matrix to sound as good as it does, I got it purely for it’s function, but I’m glad I did get it.
Also, let’s not forget that some people need USB or I2S because of bandwidth requirements. TOSLink is a no go for me because I use HQPlayer Embedded to upsample to 24/352.8.
I imagine that a state-of-the-art TOSLink cable would beat a generic HDMI cable. By contrast, I would bet that a SOTA HDMI cable would beat a generic TOSLink cable. In my system, I compared the $12 One Convey HMDI cable to a comparably priced Blue Jeans Cable TOSLink and preferred the One Convey HDMI (this shootout was pre-Snowmass). I later replaced the One Convey HDMI with a Wireworld Starlight 7 HDMI cable, which beat the One Convey by a material margin. I have yet to demo a SOTA TOSLink cable between the Matrix and the DS Sr. I am open to doing so, but I am sufficiently happy with the sound of the Starlight 7 HDMI that I am not looking to spend a lot of money on a SOTA TOSLink without at least some anecdotal evidence that such a cable is a material improvement over SOTA HDMI cables such as the Wireworld Starlight 7 series.
Yes. What is the max over toxlink for dsd & pcm? It seems a bit fuzzy to me
Well the DH Labs Glass Master isn’t inexpensive at $140 for 1/2 meter but I guess price is relative. I’m going to give it another go today as sometimes our brains are more receptive at different listening sessions. The recording I usually use to begin with is Tom Grant’s ‘Tune it In’ as I find it easy to identify the piano tone that sounds the most correct (or pleasing?) and then go from there. I’ve heard this recording hundreds of times so it’s really easy to pick out differences in cables/gear.
24/96 is all it is speced to allow. Some people have been able to get 24/192. But that would be the max…
Does sacd dsd as well
To me, Chris5 wasn’t giving anyone grief, he was just suggesting to give the toslink evaluation more time…
So I’m waiting for my matrix x-spdif 2, and I’ve been testing hdmi cables and voltages on my ultradigital powered by the small green computer LPS. So far I have found some interesting things, confirmed by my wife who did blind testing.
Increasing voltage from 6v to 9v resulted in increased presence and sharpness of transients make percussion feel very real. This however was a bit distracting on vocals and more complicated music. This was using a wireworld starlight 7 hdmi and starlight 7 USB.
Replacing the hdmi with an audioquest vodka relieves some of the sharpness at the expense of soundstage. Best is simply dropping voltage to 8v on the LPS, and using the wireworld hdmi.
Once I get my matrix, I’ll redo this test, then keep the digital converter and hdmi cable I prefer.
Hey Boot…Slightly off topic…
When you were using the iFI wall wart with your Matrix, were you using 5 or 9 volt?
It was the 5V model.
Thanks Boot!!
What voltage are you running now with your new LPS?
5v is not really enough. There is going to be a voltage drop when the voltage passes through the on-board circuitry. That’s why the input voltage is 6v to 9v.
7V on the UpTone LPS-1.2.
I just hooked up the Matrix with a new Wireworld Starlight 7 and wondering a couple of things:
Is I2S supposed to be lower volume than USB? (I have to set my BHK pre 5 notches higher generally)
Does the brightness mellow with burn in? I’m assuming that is largely coming from the cable.
Not sure about lower volume as I haven’t done a direct A/B comparison. The brightness definitely improves with burn in and I think it applies to both the cables and the Matrix. Give it a few hours of play for a couple of weeks and you should see a notable improvement in the richness of the sound.
I find it interesting that the I2S sounds more like Toslink than USB (like 75% there), but seems a little more accurate, if a tiny bit noisier.
In my set up both Toslink and I2s sound very good. Once I added WW Silver Starlight - I2S is the winner. USB is not so great by comparison.
Ted is really spot on about the length of the USB cable. I have been using somewhat long cables because the only WW Silver Starlight I could find was 3m, and some time ago I bought a 3m Shunyata Venom USB by accident. I don’t know about the I2S, but swapping in my spare 1.5m Venom has had a considerable improvement on the sound quality, especially for DSD.
Now I’m looking for an even shorter and fancier USB…I haven’t done lots of comparisons, but my impression is that the Venom is pretty good, but 1.5m is the shortest they go.
JMaxwell 12in “data only”
