New Musiland 01USD

Available on-line (in China): tmall

Musiland is starting to refresh all of their offerings. Here is a photo of the new 01 USD

• Supports USB3.0 power, USB 2.0 high speed interface protocols
• Capable of 32Bit/384kHz audio processing
• Precision clock synthesis algorithm, high-precision timing mechanism for handling ultra-low jitter digital processing. (I think this means they are using the larger FPGA)
• MULINK digital interface (not very useful for us for the time being)
• Uses Musiland  “sixth generation”  USB-powered circuitry to provide a stable, clean power supply
• Driver supports Windows 8 operating system

(I am waiting to see the inside of the Musiland 03 Dragon :-))

Soomal just published a “first look” article on this device [link]

Indeed, the FPGA and USB chip have been upgraded (Same ones are use in the 03)

The spdif signals are generated by the FPGA and buffered by a TI HCU04 HEX inverter. This is the same as the previous version, but without the output transformers. Probably a good thing, since may diyers replaced the transformers with higher quality ones.

The 1117 regulators have been replaced by these regulators (S5EBI). Can anyone identify these regulators?

Musiland Devices: Reader Review

This review on Musiland USB devices come from a reader (many thanks!) who shared his experiences in the comments section. I appreciate this contribution as I personally do not have the skill, ears and (no longer) patience to discern sound at this level.

I added some details and photos to better organize, illustrate and add additional context to the review.

So far I am blown away by the sound of the 02 Dragon and 01, but scratching my head as to why the 01 sounds better, by a noticeable margin, over the 02 when used as a PC interface.

The 01 is the 2012 Monitor 01USD. Here is the 02 Dragon and the 2012 01USD side by side (click for larger photo). The digital side looks almost identical. The power section uses the same regulators. The only factor for the o1 sounding better as a digital interface I would guess is, “simpler is better”?. There is no analog section in the 01USD and therefore no additional power supplies, including the DC-DC switching converters. In addition the SPDIF signal of the 02 has to travel back from the FPGA to the other side of the board, whereas in the 01 the spdif signal is taken to the external connector right at the edge of the FPGA

With either unit and on both my systems KS sounded better then ASIO, so I stayed with KS for all comparisons.

One issue – just could not get either to be recognized by my windows 8 PC using the USB 3.0 cable (probably do to the CY7C68013A-56 LTXC being a USB 2.0 chip). Not really a problem, since all my better USB cables are 2.0 and worked great.

The Musiland drivers and control panel worked much better on my i5/8Gb RAM/Windows 7 machine – even running the 01 and 02 panels concurrently without issue (allowing me to switch between the two in foobar or JPlay). On my Quad4/4Gb/Vista machine the newest Musiland version choked and would not play, and FoobarJPlay would just crash the machine.
M2Tech still has much better drivers on the 4Gb RAM machine. But I love the control and flexibility of the Musiland control panel.

I myself don’t like Vista even for regular tasks. I use either XP or Win7.

Comparing Digital Interfaces:

2012 01USD vs the Audiophileo 2 (photo from 6moons) and the HiFace USB, and the Hiface EVO (photo from 6moons)

The EVO’s architecture is very close to the Musiland. The main differences is that the clocks are generated by two dedicated fixed frequency clocks rather than by the DCMs (Digital Clock Managers) in the Xilinx FPGA. The Audiophilleo (left) has a different architecture. It uses an ARM9 processor implementing the USB interface and also advanced dithered digital attenuation, ramped muting, balance and polarity reversal on the fly; the output clock is also from fixed frequency oscillators.

So far the 01, has easily beat the Audiophilleo 2 and the Hi Face USB. The EVO is still significant a cut ahead (driving my 6 – 32bit AKM DAC per channel, transformer coupled, ECC99 APL DAC). The sound has such a natural ease, perfect tone, and excellent detail – it is close to my EVO in sound. I can’t wait for the 03USD to see if it can’t beat the EVO.

Comparing analog output

02 Dragon with external supply, RCA output vs 2012 01 USD SPDIF out into the Xindak 05 (with NOS 6922s)

The 02 Dragon implements the newest TI DAC: The 32Bit/384kHz PCM5102 DAC. The Xindak 05 is based on the AD1852 24Bit/192KHz DAC and has a tube output stage

The 02 Dragon on the Analog outs, using a Acopian linear PS on the DC (this really helped) sounded really good. Only in comparison to the 01USD/Xindak 5 did I notice a bit of edge, smaller sound stage, and less natural tone.

The difference with the 01/Xindak combo was surprisingly small, but significant. The differences were an extended depth and width of sound stage, a bit more dynamics, most important – a more natural timbre to most instruments (most noticeable on violins and clarinet). But the 02 (with the Acopian linear PS) was shockingly good for the simplicity and cost (my SPDIF cable alone cost much more!)

Office system: Class A output/ Class A tube pre Hybrid integrated, Ref 3a Dulcettes, Tellurium Q Black cables, Velodyne Optimum 10 sub.

Headphone system: Sennhieser HD800/Warren Audio cable, EarMax – NOS Tele 801s tubes.

02 Dragon with external supply, RCA output vs EVO with external supply feeding APL DAC

Note: the APL DAC used in the comparison is not the off the shelf model shown in the photo below. It is a custom made model off a Denon DVD3910 unit. See the comments for additional details

The EVO/APL combination is rightly in another league entirely (yeah for 35X the price!). For money this 02 is a steal. Although the headphone amp is mediocre. But hey, what do expect for $150! I would certainly use it on the road – it’s a great portable solution (love the round digital vol control).

And the 02 Dragon played 2L’s DxD files (32/352K) flawlessly, and really sounded great.

I used the foobar/Jplay combination on both my systems – it sounds really good – beating my previous fav foobar/SoX mod2 (176k,aliasing, linear phase, 95% Passband). But Jplay is such a pain! SoX can handle anything, all samples rates, flawlessly – never a crash or lock-up. Note: JPLAY/Foobar only works for Redbook files, it choked on anything above 44k. I simply rename the foo_jplay.dll file, and reopened foobar to disable it.

Using the EVO (Acopian PS)/APL the differences were much, much larger.

Sound stage

Width and depth of the sound stage were greater, but more importantly, the realism of the position of the players in the sound stage. Think cardboard 2D cutouts staggered, versus realistic 3D holographic images positioned into the 3D sound field. Each point of music emanating it’s own realistic front, side and back wave. The front stronger, but back and side providing the really important ambient clues, it’s this ambient “presence” that helps create a lifelike realism. Very hard to achieve, but very rewarding. The 02 was more 2D then 3D, the EVO/APL extremely 3D.

Tonality

The 02 had a hardness, almost metallic quality to the tone. The EVO/APL was supremely natural, rich and detailed, with the natural decay of overtones. This is especially noticeable on acoustic instruments, i.e. acoustic guitar, violins, piano (big time), etc… The APL with it’s tubed output (internal linear PS) and transformer coupling excels here. The effect of opamps (even the best) and coupling caps has a major effect on this part of the sound. I have heard many solid state DACs, and none can produce this kind of natural tonality. Even ones with really good discrete output stages (Burson, Meridian, etc…).

Dynamics

Lastly dynamics, here it was closer. The edge still with the EVO/APL combination. It’s not as much the macro dynamics as the micro dynamics that count. The the impulse response issue (and ringing). The Hi Res recordings are so good here. I mean, how realistically fast and accurately can a system response to a plucked guitar string? It’s the difference in sound good versus realistic sound.

Main system: Class A MOSFET amp/Class A NOS tube pre-amp hybrid, Reference 3a Royal Masters, Tellurium Q Ultra Black cables, Velodyne DD-12 sub.

Test tracks on all my reviews included (Redbook- Foobar/JPlay)): David Gray – White Ladder, Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark, ColdPlay – Mylo Xyloto, Florence and the Machine – Lungs, Brand New – Brand New, Mozart Symphonies – Berlin Phil, Arcangelo Correlli – Concerto Grossi.
Hi-Res tracks (foobar only): Cat Stevens – Tea for the Tillerman (HD tracks 192k FLAC), 2L – (DxD resampled to 176K) Annar Folleso – Ole Bull Violin Concertos, Vivaldi:(192K FLAC) Recitative and Aria from Cantata RV 679, “Che giova il sospirar, povero core” .

Acopian PS: http://www.acopian.com/single-l-goldbox-m.html (9V yellow Box B)

Bulk Transfer Mode in Musiland Monitor Devices

After some reports at head-fi indicating that the Musiland device driver uses bulk mode transfer, I decided to do some USB port snooping of my own by downloading one of the many USB protocol analyzers tools available in the internet. I decided to try USBlyzer BETA (no real reason, other tools should be just as good) to capture the data through the Musiland device while playing a music track.

This is what I found:

• Transfer mode is indeed bulk transfer.
• The size of the packet varies with the sample frequency. For 44.1K material, the size is 2KB and for 96K material, it is 4KB. I also tested 176.4K material and the packet size is 8KB (8,192 bytes).
• Bulk data transfers happens about every 5 msec. If you do the math, the size of the transfer at this rate is about 2x the data required to support the music sample rate (24bits x 2 channels x sample rate). I suppose this “headroom”  is to prevent loosing data due to things like transfer retries, bandwidth sharing, etc. And of course the device only transfers enough data to keep a constant data transfer to the DAC. In contrast, Isochronous transfers in a fixed 1-msec interval
• There is a ~20 msec latency between the request and delivery of data, but there is a request every 5 msec.
• From the trace, we can see a “success” status. This I think reflects the guaranteed data delivery feature of bulk transfer (the endpoint has received the data with no error)

The following images show the captured data flow through the Musiland device while playing a 24/96KHz track. In order to understand the data we can reference the following explanation:

OUT: When the host wants to send the function a bulk data packet, it issues an OUT token followed by a data packet containing the bulk data. If any part of the OUT token or data packet is corrupt then the function ignores the packet. If the function’s endpoint buffer was empty and it has clocked the data into the endpoint buffer it issues an ACK informing the host it has successfully received the data. If the endpoint buffer is not empty due to processing a previous packet, then the function returns an NAK. However if the endpoint has had an error and it’s halt bit has been set, it returns a STALL.

Some observations:

• Since bulk transfer protocol ensures data integrity and there is ample headroom, timely and accurate data delivery is virtually guaranteed
• Based on the above observation, the Musiland device should be insensitive to USB cable length and other “issues”
• Transfer rate is about 5X less than Isochronous transfer which requires a transfer every 1 msec. This means that a PC needs to service a transfer every 1 msec for a Isochronous device and “only” once every 5 msec for the Musiland device. Thus the Musiland device is less sensitive to how busy the microprocessor is doing other things
• It is still a good idea to use a usb port that is not shared with other devices; however, with ample headroom, this doesn’t seem to be that critical

Conclusion

It appears the Musiland device is the only “hifi” consumer USB device that uses bulk mode transfer. Other notable devices including the highly acclaimed M2Tech use Isochronous-asynchronous transfer mode. The advantage of bulk transfer over Isochronous-asynchronous transter is the guaranteed nature of the data delivery. The advantage of Isochronous transfer over bulk is the guaranteed bandwidth; however if there is plenty of bandwidth available (for example, you are not maxing out the bandwidth of the USB connection by plugging in several devices), then guaranteed bandwidth is never an issue.

Musiland has designed an audio class device driver that is robust, accurate and with guaranteed data delivery. The fact that this makes it insensitive to “whatever’ happens in the PC is perhaps a reflection of Musiland’s primary market where people’s preferences and living conditions would likely preclude having a PC dedicated for music alone. My own experience reflects that reality. I have often marveled at the fact that the music “never skips a beat” no matter what I do in the PC.

Update: 7/5/11

Here is “proof” that the bulk transfer mode works well: [link]

A test was performed to evaluate data integrity of the Musiland 01USD. The test consisted in playing a 24/192k file, captured digitally (through the SPDIF interface) with another sound card and then making a comparison between the original file and the captured file.

Simmconn downloaded a 24/192K file in flac format and converted it to WAV 24/192 (almost 600MB, the size of a typical CD), played it with foobar and output the digital signal through a Musiland 01USD. The digital signal was then captured through an M-audio Audiophile sound card and Adobe’s Audition software.  The source and destination files were aligned and then compared bit by bit with an HEX editor. The result: exact match.

ODAC Revealed…

Mr. NWAVGuy has published one of his most interesting and technically revealing posts: The ODAC

LESSONS LEARNED: If this project has taught me anything, it’s that getting much better than 16 bit (96 dB) performance can be challenging. The first version of the ODAC, despite following the reference design, only had about 98 dB DNR. That’s about the same as the FiiO E10. The photo to the right shows a few dozen assorted surface mount parts that were laboriously swapped out one at a time and measurements repeated dozens of times using the dScope. Some improvements were far from intuitive. Audiophile preferred polyphenylene capacitors performed worse than less expensive types. Additional filtering on the digital power supply dramatically increased jitter. Chasing down the last few dB of dynamic range the chip is capable of proved to be especially challenging. When it was said and done, the DNR went from 98 dB to over 111 dB. That’s a huge difference and something the design-by-ear crowd would have never achieved.

The ODAC is based on very familiar components (Tenor 7022l and ESS 9023 DAC -both not having a freely available datasheet), but according to NWAVGuy, only after extensive component experimentation and measurement, was he able to achieve the numbers published in the DAC’s datasheet. This indeed is a very remarkable achievement given the fact that the entire board is USB powered, including the ESS DAC.

The final product is a collaborative effort with Yoyodyne Consulting and very affordable priced: $99 starting price.

(Another photo of a prototype board from diyaudio)

(Update 5/10/12): Production (with minor tweaks to the layout, resulting in improved jitter (-106 db)

I’m pleased to report the production version has even lower jitter. In the last ODAC article I reported the jitter components adding up to –103.3 dB. In the production version, as you can see below, it’s over 3 dB better at –106.5 dB with far fewer components.

I believe it’s related to some minor changes in the USB ground scheme. When you’re dealing with jitter components below -110 dB, even small changes in the digital grounds can impact jitter. You’re correct such changes carry a risk of making things worse instead of better. So, especially where the PC board layout is involved, we tried to play it safe with the final revisions based on everything I had learned along the way.

(Rev 4)

(Rev 2 (left) and Rev 1)

Notice the following:

• Replaced can-type of bypass capacitors with SMT types
• Replaced radial through-hole bypass caps with SMT types
• Use of large inductor in front of DAC supply regulator

Perhaps these larger-feature capacitors act like antennas and pick up more air-born EMI causing jitter problems? I notice a similar “trend” on the Musiland USB devices: newer models have done away with through-hole components (maybe it is just cost-savings). Compare the new 01 USD with the old 01 USD:

The ODAC is similar in design to the Calyx Coffee

Some wisdom from the comments section

(Whether you agree or disagree with NWAVGuy’s approach, there is always something to learn in his posts and comments)

Cable ferrite for noise suppression

Use of ferrite bead on USB cable and choosing a “free” USB port [link]. I have been doing this for a while in my own setup

The ferrites do suppress common mode noise and also radiated noise. That lowers noise on the ODAC’s power supplies, which in turn, slightly improves the overall performance. The ferrites are also a good idea for RFI suppression from cell phones, etc. The ODAC has ferrite filtering on board, but it helps to keep as much noise as possible from even reaching the ODAC.

Audibility of jitter [link]

The ODAC and DAC1 both measure sufficiently well to be transparent. But they do measure differently and the DAC1 has a performance advantage in several areas, especially jitter. Yet they sound the same. This is further evidence you’re not going to get better sound by trying to further improve the ODAC, use the XMOS interface, etc.

Put another way, I doubt the XMOS interface beats the DAC1 for jitter. Yet the ODAC and DAC1 sound the same. And it’s not surprising. All the audible ODAC jitter components, using a worst case signal designed to expose the maximum amount of jitter, are below -110 dB and the total is below -103 dB. Consider Ethan Winer’s distortion audibility test. The distortion is entirely masked by the music around -75 dB. A level of -103 dB is massively lower. Ethan very conservatively sets the bar at -100 dB for assured total transparency.

Stay tuned to the next article which will be more technical in nature. Mr. NWAVGuy will go into more detail how he went about the improvements. This is a very valuable source for us diy types with no measuring equipment (and with bad ears :-)).