Antipodes DXe (DV)

[Confused]

Not to the Devialet. I have run it via S/PDIF to the Grimm -- which is also uses a USB-preferred digital amplifier. It sounded very good, but no better as far as I could tell.

Then I got the Antipodes. I tried both roon/air and the Antipodes roon ready USB connections from the Antipodes and feel that roon ready/USB sounds slightly better than roon/air over ethernet. Both sound very good but I think that USB is slightly better than what I get using roon/air over ethernet and that agrees with comments I've seen from Antipodes themselves. I haven't tried any tweaks on the USB connection and I wasn't using any high end USB cables with roon/air, just ordinary computer Cat 6 and 6A cabling. I don't know if I could have tweaked the ethernet connection to do better than the USB connection.

Have you tried the Antipodes via S/PDIF versus USB?

The Grimm might be a 'USB Preferred' amplifier, but I am not sure the Devialet is?  Although to be clear, USB and S/PDIF do work differently so the comparison will be very product / system specific.  With asynchronous USB the Devialet's clock governs, with S/PDIF the Devialet will extract the clock from the Antipodes.  So if the S/PDIF clock in the Antipodes is a good one, this may produce the best result, as well as avoiding the 'leakage loop' and isolation type issues that USB can suffer from.  If the S/PDIF clock in the Antipodes is mediocre, then USB could be much better.  This is a bit of a generalisation, I guess I am just saying that it might be worth giving S/PDIF a try.