Mk2 vs Airlens+Directstream SR

Audio Components DACs
21

Thanks

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22

2 problems with the post about usb better than i2s:
I2s is far superior in any dac;
Hard drive has no bearing on sound, neither does ssd, nvme, or any other media like a nas, San, jbod, or any other media you use.

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If you hear that I2S is better than USB in your system, thatā€™s fine. by all means use I2S. Itā€™s just that with the MK2 and a better USB cable, and in my system, I find USB brings me closer to a live performance than I2S.

Iā€™m sorry, but in my system, I have tried NAS, different hard drives and using a Samsung hard drive with a Nordost Valhalla 2 USB cable and a Ifi Elite power supply compared to a Synology NAS with a WW Platinum 8 ethernet cable, the hard drive is obviously a clearer more detailed sound.

It is good for you that you do not hear these differences in your system, save you a lot of money that you can use for music instead.

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I worked at Seagate which is 1 of the largest hard drive manufacturers in the world. I also worked at another storage company before Seagate. I met an audio manufacturer at a show a decade ago claiming that this particular hard drive sounded better than other hard drives. I asked which hard drives he tested and I told him that his best sounding hard drive was the exact same hard drive that he thought sounded inferior, it was just rebranded.

1 more thing, Samsung doesnā€™t make hard drives, they are made by Seagate and have for over a decade.

I had the luxury to test/play with commercial hard drives (cheap drives that consumers use) and enterprise hard drives, and also had the luxury of testing/using commercial solid state storage (cheap units that we use in pcs) and enterprise solid state storage devices in my audio setup, and the only difference is the speed and longevity of life between all of them.

USB is the worst interface to use into a dac, Iā€™ve been thru that for years, using the best usb cable, reclockers, tweaks/gimmicks, and they all sounded worse than getting a DS dac and using Ethernet and/or i2s.

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25

Well now we may close the book on that topic.

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Seagate makes all their drives to the same specifications regardless of branding, or year of manufacture?

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Letā€™s elaborate on this hard drive a little. I have the 3 major brand, Seagate Iron Wolf, Toshiba N300, and Western Digital and have heard no difference between them. Itā€™s how they are used that I heard undeniable differences. Running it from a NAS definitely does not have the same clarity as running it straight into the streamer with USB. The other part of the equation is the quality of the cables, which is very significant. Then the other factor is HDD also loses a little on performance compared with SSD. I hear this difference between the Samsung SSD and the Seagate Iron Wolf HDD.

As I said before I2S is a far superior input on the DS MK1 than USB.

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