Schiit Unison USB

Unison draws effectively no power. I used a split USB cable to test some issues with the xDuoo unit I mentioned above, its USB into Unison makes extremely loud popping noises during loud recordings, probably something to do with clipping (SPDIF is totally fine, great actually, and if there's no clipping(?) in the track, the USB is superb). I used a data/power split USB cable and plugged in a portable charger for power. After 5-6 hours, the battery hadn't gone down by a single percent--and made no appreciable difference in sound. (EDIT: D'oh, I forgot Modius is USB powered)

I edited my comment above but I'll say it again, if you can, isolate the DAC on its own USB hub, and if you can't, keep USB peripherals at a minimum.

 

@ohshitgorillas Thank you for your suggestions. I had not considered the xDuoo, will look into it. RPi4 with Pi2AES is definitely more versatile but also more money.

Yes, I agree. It seems that laptops are generally the bottom of the barrel of audio transports. My old desktop machine with USB card was much better.

I have my own custom ALSA configuration set up for bit perfect, equalisation, etc. So I'm pretty comfortable with the ins and outs. But I will check. DeaDBeeF (music player) and VLC (movie player) are using the same ALSA config path.

I don't remember it sounding so bad with the Gungnir Multibit and Gen 5 USB. Maybe Unison on Modius is not so super in comparison. Also, my Neumann NDH 20 headphones, that I'm currently using, maybe more revealing than my usual HD 650. May be will listen again with HD 650 tomorrow.

Much to think about.

Edit: I will also try unplugging the other USB peripherals / isolating the hub.

@Yethal I'm using the separate micro usb port for power Thanks.

 

It's not about the Unison power draw it's about not powering the dac using laptop's noisy motherboard.

@mrflibble Dunno how much difference would it make if you're already using ALSA but can you check whether the same issue occurs with Strawberry? It can output directly to alsa sink and uses gstreamer under the hood.

 

Just an update on my USB issues.

I tried the Strawberry player (I was not previously aware of this, thanks @Yethal) and unplugging all other USB devices, but it was no help.

I then managed to pick up an RME ADI-2 DAC for a reasonable price. This was a minor improvement over the USB implementation in the Modius, it helped slightly with the nasty treble (almost like a constant hash in some tracks) and the sibilance issues . However, it did not actually fix the problem and still sounded like ass (just a bit less ass).

Next, I managed to find an Intona filter, again for a reasonable price. This did the trick! No more nasties I therefore surmise that Bifrost 2 with its galvanically isolated Unison USB would also fix this problem.

The blanket effect on the sound (particularly noticeable with speech) was caused by something different. It is a combination of the Neumann NDH 20 headphones and the Harman EQ I am using. I need to so some further work to optimize the EQ for these headphones. The Neumann sound even worse without any EQ (very poor tonality, IMO). Sennheiser HD650 (non EQ'd), on the other hand, sound fine.

 

Turns out the issue I had with USB Audio Player PRO and Unison USB (no sound after a sample rate change) can be fixed by enabling the "Free USB bandwidth after playback" USB audio tweak.

 

I added Unison USB to my Yggdrasil A2. Everything is out of my PC.

Having used Unison on Modius for a moment, I immediately recognized some of the qualities of the interface when adding it to Yggdrasil. What I hear is the SPDIF optical has a bit more veil and rounder transients. Unison adds a bit of clarity and sharpens the transients. Unison is probably the better technical performer but I find myself often preferring the softer SPDIF presentation.

The relative delta is on the level of differences between different brands of good interconnect cables around the same price point.

 

Spdif reference is from optical not coax ?

 

Yes. The mobo doesn't have a coax spdif output.

 

Hi,
I found really interesting this (old) post.
I will buy a Yggdrasil MIB, and I am wondering which is the best sounding solution between:
- PCI Ex card into the PC, such as the Lynx AES16 connected via AES/EBU to the Yggdrasil
- JCAT USB PCI Ex card into the PC, and connected via USB to the Yggdrasil's Unison USB input

Could you please confirm me that the second is the best sounding solution?
Or do you have any upgrades since 2019/2020?

Do you suggest me to assemply a dedicated PC, too, or something else?

thanks!

 

I will confirm what @Garns stated in his post. I had a very similar setup (passive low power pc with a linear power supply) but with a different PCI pro audio card. Unison easily outperformed it.

Unison is so good that even with my current setup (raspberry pi with Pi2AES) I often use it instead of AES out. The differences are extremely small imo.

Building a PC that will outperform or even equal the performance of any streamer like the Pi2AES, Holo RED, Eversolo A6 or A8 will be expensive and not worth it imo.

 

@Aklegal thanks, did you also try, for your previous PC, a USB dedicated card such as the JCAT USB or USB XE? (as @Garns mentioned)

P.S. I won't use streaming services, only files on local SSD drive, so my idea would be to build a normal but dedicated PC (disconnected from internet).

 

I owned a SoTm pci USB card but I sold it long before I had the Unison USB card installed.

 

Unison outperformed Pi2AES in my system as well. With that said, even with Unison the noise from your source matters, A better PSU for my stremer brought noticeable improvement

 

From what USB output? Windows 10? Windows 11? And just normal or Wasapi? or maybe from a Pi, Apple, etc. All of that matters and blanket statements like "A is better than B" without some kind of explanation as well as what made it better.

 

From USBridge Signature running Roon

 

Do you know if Unison USB needs the 5V power supply from the USB cable connected from the source (PC or streamer)?

The JCAT PCI card has a possibility to exclude the 5V in the output, sending in this way only the data to the Unison USB.

thanks

 

It does

 

I use a lot of USB nervosa into Unison, including a JCAT card and a SOtM hub/decrapifier, and it all helps in the single digits percentage-wise but the price to performance ratio is poor, so it's big time diminishing returns. If you're set on going that route instead of just buying a purpose-built streamer as mentioned (Holo Red, pi2AES, etc.), the JCAT Femto card with some sort of very basic 5V LPS (TeraDak or a used Uptone Audio LPS-1 or something) used would be sufficient. You really should spend more of your time with OS than anything else, better able to get some needle movement that way and you'll have a good amount of control at either no cost or little cost vs. blowing $$$ on boutique computer audiophile parts. Again, though, for 90% of people you should just get a streamer, purpose-built Audio PC's are a rabbit hole and a money sink, to put it mildly. There's a reason a lot of Yggdrasil owners use pi2AES.

 

It'd be more cost effective to just buy a USB-based streamer like an sms-200, ultrarendu or a usbridge signature. With a purpose-built PC using (mostly) desktop parts you're overpaying for processing power and capabilities that just not going to be utilized when using the machine just for playing music

 

Yeah today I would strongly advise anyone thinking of building a standalone pc for unison to not do that. There are hundreds of ways to go wrong. With a PI2AES and one LPS you can get amazing results with almost no fuss, and in most cases will outperform a PC. (nb I have no interest in streaming either but run a nas on the local network and play music from that.) I never got my music PC to sound better than the PI2AES and I tried fairly hard. If you want to dink around you still have a lot of scope in software on the PI2AES. Plus it scales beyond Yggdrasil if that day comes.