External dac

Whole House Products & Projects Whole House Product Questions
1

Can I send the wifi music stream from the s50pro via coax out, bypassing the internal dac, to an external dac and keep the source bitrate & resolution?

2

Yes. Coaxial or Optical Digital Outs on items 11 & 12.

2021-08-08 S50 Interfaces
2021-08-08 S50 Interfaces908Ă—837 110 KB

3

That’s what I expected to do but it seems the digital outputs are limited to 44.1/16. Wonder if there is a work around.

4

Ok @Driver8

  1. What source are you using .?
  2. What is the resolution of the source?
  3. How do you know the bitrate of the output ? e.g. what external dac are you using ?
5

Streaming from qobuz
Upto 192/24
Going from s50pro to topping e30 dac through coax. The topping has a display showing the resolution at 44.1/16

6

OK @Driver8 Jerry,

So now the problem is to check where the down sampling is happening. I am not familiar with Qobuz.

Is it possible to run Qobuz on Laptop/Mac and use the USB Interface on the DAC to see what sample rate you have for the same track ? This would eliminate the S50+ completely.

Also if you have an Optical Cable might be worth trying that too just to see if the results are the same.

Does Qobuz show the resolution and bit rate of the selected track ?

Regards, Kevin

P.S. In the meantime I will have a think about how I can replicate something with high resolution on the S50+.

7

Hi, Driver8
To answer your question; No, there is no workaround.
The digital outputs are running over I2S. I2S is clocked with 16bit/44.1kHz by the microcontroler.

Regards,
Jordy

2 Likes
8

@j.eeken1 I have just noticed that it actually does state this in the specification.

Audio Decode 24/192
Audio Output 16/44

Thanks for explaining why :slight_smile:

1 Like
9

Thank you…this is just for the digital outputs? Analog is not affected?

10

I don’t know how the internal dac is handling it. But for sure, you wiil be better off with your Topping dac.
Above 16/44.1 audio is only relevant for studio productions. For listening to music, the quality of the dac makes the difference. that’s why Arylic is offering the sabre dac module.

1 Like
11

FWIW, I recommend the upgrade to the ESS Sabre 9023 DAC. It provides a marked improvement to the native Up2Stream V3 DAC output. As @j.eeken1 said above, the Up2Stream is the master and has a fixed clock rate so the clock rate of the i2s can’t be changed. Even with that Sabre DAC you’re stuck at 16bit/44k.