USB Audio on the Touch

I think we all know by now what this section is for.
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Cressy Snr
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#1 USB Audio on the Touch

Post by Cressy Snr »

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82110

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net.au/in ... ebox-touch

Tried it on my SBT but it didn't work with my M1 DAC.

I reckon I made a syntax error somewhere but couldn't figure out where.
Only thing I can think of is the "vi" editor on OSX terminal might default to edit mode when invoked so by typing the "i"
I had an extra character at the top of the edit string, which cocked up the sound configuration file"

Restored the SBT to factory settings in the end as I'm too chicken to carry on.

Could be interesting though to those brave enough. Good thing is you can't brick your SBT so its not a disaster if things go awry.

Someone more fleet of finger than me might have better luck.
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Nick
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#2

Post by Nick »

Yep, I have not seen a vi/vim in the last 10 years that started in command line more. if you wanted to check the contents of the file you could use

cat filename

to see all the file

or

head filename

to see the first few lines
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Cressy Snr
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#3

Post by Cressy Snr »

Cheers Nick

I thought that might be it.

Thanks for the extra info too. :)

I might have another go later.
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#4

Post by Andrew »

vi/vim - what's wrong with emacs mutter mutter mutter ;) one true brace style mutter mutter
Analogue, the lost world that lies between 0 and 1.
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Nick
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#5

Post by Nick »

what's wrong with emacs
Nothing if you want a way of life, but if you are just after a text editor then lots :-)

PS, to the rest, if you want to see a real war, forget CD/Vinyl, PC/MAC all the rest, the Vi/Emacs UNIX editor conflict has been going on for every.
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ed
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#6

Post by ed »

PS, to the rest, if you want to see a real war, forget CD/Vinyl, PC/MAC all the rest, the Vi/Emacs UNIX editor conflict has been going on for every.
every what?

diet(snigger), you missed the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war

more diet(for Nick if he's interested) I always preferred vi, it seems this might have something to do with it.....as I thought it similar to the original george editor 'ed'....:

http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~gc/history/

George Coulouris was in at the early days of cafs which I was part of the development team for in the early 80s.....yeah, emacs sucks!
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Nick
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#7

Post by Nick »

every what?
g/y/s///g
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Cressy Snr
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#8

Post by Cressy Snr »

Got it to work!

The Musical Fidelity M1 DAC has asynchronous USB input so the mods work
like a charm.
All other outputs are disabled by the hack, including the analogue outputs
and the system sound effects.

Sound quality wise it is better than the SPDIF outputs, at least with the MF DAC anyway.

Buuuut I'm not really at ease with hacking things like this so my ears are on red alert for any tell-tale clicks or pops that
would indicate that the data stream integrity is suspect. It is difficult to relax at the moment. If I hear one click, it's going back as it was.

A big plus however is that this output sounds a lot less digital, if that makes sense.
Cressy Snr
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#9

Post by Cressy Snr »

OK after listening for a couple of hours, the hacked SBT seems to be functioning properly with my M1 DAC.

The whole thing seems to be more analogue sounding than either of the SPDIF options.

It is sweet clean, detailed and offers a solidity of presentation that is
ahead of anything digital I've heard to date.

Not a bad result for someone who hasn't been near a unix terminal screen
for 20 years.

Some users who have done the hack have reported clicks and pops with certain DACs but the MF seems happy to accept what the SBT is serving up
without hiccups.
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#10

Post by Mike H »

Interesting!
 
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Cressy Snr
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#11

Post by Cressy Snr »

Yes it was.

Trouble is I found out that my M1 DAC does not support 24/96 on its USB input so my hi-rez files were downsampled.

I reverted to the standard SBT setup after finding that out.
Still it was an interesting little experiment that gives good sound if your DAC supports the highest-rez inputs on its usb port.

Mine does not so never mind.
Cressy Snr
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#12

Post by Cressy Snr »

I managed to simulate the analogue effect of the USB output hack by
visiting the LMS settings>advanced>file types menu and setting the server to convert all formats to raw PCM before passing them to the player.

Basically the now player does very little extra processing.

So not a lot of need to bother with any hackery now. Not in my situation anyway. But it was very interesting nonetheless.
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