18-Feb-2016, 20:52
(18-Feb-2016, 18:58)fritzcurtis1 Wrote: Andrew at Sonicorbiter has been awesome. He just informed me that all Sonicorbiters as of today have been upgraded (including mine remotely) to v.10 which includes the 176k sample rate. There is no up sampling done by the Sonicorbiter it is simply passing the signal now at 176 instead of 44k. Roon is doing all the processing as again it is a Roon certified device. Sound has gotten even better on DSD64 and DSD128 files. This is an absolute must for 300 bucks. I have a Raspberry on order to do a full review and comparison as well. Stay tuned. But based on the the chip differences, I am positive the So will sound better. The issue with the PI is all processing s done via the USB hub audio and all. The chip alone on the SO cost Andrew almost 100 bucks! The cheaper chip and signal path introduces pops and crackles that many have complained about. I get none of that with the SO. The sound is amazing. No financial affiliation at all with Andrew or SO, just one happy customer.
The pops/clicks on the Pi are nothing to do with the "cheaper chip". They are a result of the shared USB/Ethernet bus. And they are only an issue if you try to play DSD128 and higher and use a USB DAC plugged into a USB port on the Pi with Roon sending DSD data over the network. None of this happens with the optical port as its maximum rate is 192 as on the Dialog/Phantom. So that make no difference at all in this use case as one is not using a USB DAC, Roon is sending a max of 192/24 and using the optical port on the Pi.
Also, this - "The issue with the PI is all processing s done via the USB hub audio and all" doesn't make sense.
I think you're giving a lot of emphasis to the pricing of the chip on these systems. On the Pi the CPU is not being strained in the least. It's effectively passing on what it's receiving on the Ethernet port to the optical port. I would be very surprised if there was any difference in the sound of the 2 systems. All the sound processing is done by Roon in both cases and the only difference is the transport mechanism used, not the processing/downsampling algos.
Since you are already positive that the more powerful processor, in a case where the processor is doing very little, is going to sound better, you should probably save your money and not bother buying a Pi
