New 24/192 USB Transports are excellent

[jkeny]

Hey guys,
Posting here - moderators can move it if it should be elsewhere!

I was good to myself at Xmas & bought a couple of these new 24/192 Transports/DACs. I had already bought a Musiland 01US a couple of months ago ($80) which is a 24/192 USB transport/DAC. It has SPDIF & analog outs. Now I'm a DIY person (like Fran) so I bought this with DIY in mind. It sounds good out-of-the-box but responds well to some mods (more about that later if there's interest).

I was very happy with this but kept hearing about an Italian USB transport from a new company M2Tech called a HiFace http://www.m2tech.biz/products.html - again a 24/192 USB transport (no DAC this time). It appealed to me from a technical perspective so I got myself one & this sounded about as good as my modded Musiland AFAIR. After a couple of mods (& this is a nightmare to modify because it is about the size of a cig. lighter) it is stupendous. I would seriously reckon that this thing would stand up well against some of the top-of-the-range transports although I don't have any to audition. This thing sounds like very expensive analogue & I am just running it from my Dell laptop using Foobar as the Music Player & at 16/44.1KHz.

Here's what I posted about it elsewhere:
The HiFace has better clarity all through the frequency range
- bass is amazingly textured & powerful
- treble has an airiness to it
- finer details are revealed
- soundstage is deep & wide with venues & recording ambience being revealed clearly
- as I said already, just like really good analogue, not a bit of digititis in it. Last night I listened for about 4 hours through headphones without a hint of harshness or headache
- This unit really is a killer when modded - I would love to hear others try it & report their impressions! It would be interesting to hear how it compares against some of the big ticket Transports/DACs (Ayre, Wavelength,dCs, etc) - I don't own or have access to these units

Anybody care to have a get together to listen to these against other respectable big ticket transports?

Oh, yes I forgot to add that I also got a present of a Squeezebox Receiver which as you all know id a networked music player & am modding this as we speak. Limitation is 24/44.1KHz but I don't see this as a problem if the sound is excellent & it will have to be to beat or match the HiFace!

[jkeny]

Some Pics:
Musiland 01US

HiFace

[Fran]

Great reading John.

So, from knowledge elsewhere, the HiFace is the better sounding unit, right? And it comes with the drivers for windows? Does it do all versions of windows I wonder.....

I know you also did some fairly extensive mods to both units, would you maybe show us a few pics of what you've done....


Fran

[jkeny]

Great reading John.

So, from knowledge elsewhere, the HiFace is the better sounding unit, right? And it comes with the drivers for windows? Does it do all versions of windows I wonder.....

The Musiland is no slouch either & much, much easier to modify but yes the HiFace is much better sounding in modded form. In stock form there probably isn't that much between them except the price - about $80 for Musiland & 100 euro for HiFace + shipping for both.

I know you also did some fairly extensive mods to both units, would you maybe show us a few pics of what you've done....


Fran

I'm struggling with a spyware/virus attack at the moment (picke dup last night - don't ask :)) & my cpu is 100% engaged all the time - everything is so slooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

Is there really any interest here in the mods other than from yourself - you have probably seen my posts & pics over on DIYAudio but it will require bit of work to host the same pics & set-up img links to them. I'll do it if there is interest but just want to avoid any unnecessary work :)

[Fran]

Yes, good point, although I think one or 2 pics showing the incredible micro surgery would be instructive. Can you link to the pics on diyaudio?



Fran

[jkeny]

Yes, good point, although I think one or 2 pics showing the incredible micro surgery would be instructive. Can you link to the pics on diyaudio?

Fran

I don't think non-members can see the DIYAudio pics though - text yes, pics, no? Can anybody see these?

First pic shows the HiFace + ESS DAC. The HiFace has a DIP8 socket stuck to the Xilinx chip which is where the I2S connects & it works as a I2S plug for the I2S socket on the back of the ESS DAC
Second pic shows the back of the ESS DAC with I2S socket
Third pic shows the two plugged together. Iv'e not plugged the HiFace directly into the PC but used a USB extension cable & you can see the red & black wires coming out of it that I feed a clean 5V supply through, in place of the dirty USB 5V from the PC

Two main mods that I did to the HiFace which brought the sound up a number of notches
- cut the on-board 3.3V supply to the 2 clocks & supplied external clean 3.3V battery supply directly.
- took off the 3.3V switching regulator on the HiFace & supplied a clean battery 3.3V directly

These mods aren't yet implemented in these pics!

[Fran]

No, not seeing the pics. But not to worry, I'm sure if theres interest we can host them somewhere.

This has been the holy grail for quite a while. All of a sudden the need for specialised IT experience is gone and the system can be used by anyone. I think wavelength and ayre were the only ones with proprietary USB drivers beforehand, and they used the standard USB chip (PCM2707 from TI). So this uses a new chip, correct?

Fran

[jkeny]

No, not seeing the pics. But not to worry, I'm sure if theres interest we can host them somewhere.

This has been the holy grail for quite a while. All of a sudden the need for specialised IT experience is gone and the system can be used by anyone. I think wavelength and ayre were the only ones with proprietary USB drivers beforehand, and they used the standard USB chip (PCM2707 from TI). So this uses a new chip, correct?

Fran

If you like, Fran, I'll host them & edit the post to reflect the new img URLs

I bet Ayre & Wavelength are sh**tting themselves as I believe that these units get you 80-90% of the way there for 1/30 of the cost - some economics. BUT neither Ayre nor Wavelength have got high res USB transports/DACs - they are limited to 16/44, AFAIK, certainly don't do 24/192 in asynchronous USB (this was always Rankins claim to fame - he spent 6 months developing an asynch driver which he & Ayre used for their devices - one reason the product prices were high). Now 2 companies (one Chinese & one Italian) have written asynch drivers & launched products for 100 euro - kinda blows their bullshit out of the water really :)

When I started a thread to look into who the Musiland device works on DiYHiFi.org (a technical site frequented by a lot of these guys) Charles Hansen (Ayre) & a couple of others started to rant about cheap Chinese crap & racist slurs, blah, blah. I could tell they were worried (no technical discussion whatsoever) - even more so by the HiFace (I'm sure they would have similar racist rants about it:))

I believe Gordon Rankin (Wavelength) is busy trying to write some hig-res drivers quickly :)

Anyway, both devices use a Cypress generic USB chip to do the USB comms but the real heart of the devices is a Xilinx chip - in the case of the Musiland, it's a Xilinx FPGA & the HiFace, it's a Xilinx CPLD. As you know Fran, these are programmable devices so this is now software controlled rather than hardware. We are limited by the programming & less so by the hardware. The devices can be upgraded & have been a number of times. Drivers are available for windows (all flavours), Mac (HiFace only) & plans for Unix/Linux (both devices)

[Ivor]

Is there really any interest here in the mods other than from yourself..

Yep. There's no doubt that music from a hard drive source is a genuine option for high level playback and a few of us will be keeping an eye on developments. Frankly without yourself and Fran (and Chang and Justin be times) here I wouldn't know diddly squat about USBs and all that.
I don't know enough yet to know what to ask but I do read these threads, I suspect there's more posters here like that.

[jkeny]

Is there really any interest here in the mods other than from yourself..

Yep. There's no doubt that music from a hard drive source is a genuine option for high level playback and a few of us will be keeping an eye on developments. Frankly without yourself and Fran (and Chang and Justin be times) here I wouldn't know diddly squat about USBs and all that.
I don't know enough yet to know what to ask but I do read these threads, I suspect there's more posters here like that.

Thanks Ivor,
The proof of whether it stands up to scrutiny as a high-end playback platform is in the listening - I certainly think it does but I've been known to have been wrong before :) A shoot-off is required!