Wednesday, 23 March 2016

I2S DACs

The Pi-DAC+ I2S DAC arrived today. Maybe I'll have time to check it out, maybe not. Lots cheaper than the ODAC, so a good value item if it sounds as good or better.

In principle, I2S-connected DACs can sound better than equivalent USB-connected DACs because

  • They don't have to reconstruct the clock etc. - the data is presented directly across the I2S interface, without conversion into/out of USB and streamed across a wire in-between
  • The RPi uses far less CPU to drive the DAC, since it's not doing conversion, allowing it to track the data better with less chance of drop-outs
We'll see...

No comments:

Post a Comment