Empirical Audio USB Off-Ramp Turbo 2

[deepak]

Does anyone here have the USB Off Ramp Turbo 2? I know of only one person on Headfi that has one and he said it was an improvement over an Audiophile USB as transport to his DA10.

I'm a bit skeptical and Empirical Audio makes no mention of a money back guarantee. Their engineer posts a lot on Headfi and AudioAsylum.

Website: http://www.empiricalaudio.com/

[tiberian]

i only know he charges a ridiculous amount of money for his products.

[deepak]

If it's an improvement along the lines of switching from a good DAC to an exceptional DAC I would pay $950 for it. Only 2 (non-headphone) upgrades have yielded that sort of improvement.

[granodemostasa]

i've looked into this in the past (and i'm still considering it)... red wine audio made one a while back that was said to sound indistinguishable from the empirical audio stuff; however, a look on their website revealed they no longer make it.

[Eric5676]

i only know he charges a ridiculous amount of money for his products.

Sorry to bump this old thread but I was doing a search for something and it stuck out to me since I've been looking at Empirical Audio as of late and I've had probably about 5 days' worth of back and forth emails with Steve Nugent, who is essentially the one man operation behind the place.

No doubt: He's smart, very knowledgeable and qualified.

He's been gracious in answering a bunch of questions I've been firing at him via email. It's some great work he's done, but for some reason, my instincts on the whole matter tend to match here with yours.

I suspect there are others around here with a much better background of knowledge and a common frame of reference who could comment more authoritatively one way or the other.

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

All his mods are overpriced. And his posts are full of fluff.

Biggie.

[Eric5676]

All his mods are overpriced. And his posts are full of fluff.

Biggie.

Ouch. That bad, huh?

I'll admit: I've drooled looking at some of that work he's done, but that instinct of mine has held me back.

When you can look at a Turbomodded/Superclock 3/blah blah Benchmark DAC1 and somehow you're at three grand (?!?!)...it just didn't seem right to me, even though I don't have quite the background like some of the folks around here do when it comes to these sorts of things.

Do any of you know where I can comparable (or better) mods/work like that done without being ripped off? I know of SACDMods off the top of my head...

[n_maher]

Personally I steer clear of anyone who sells a $750 power cable wrapped in what would appear to be plastic wire loom.

[Eric5676]

Personally I steer clear of anyone who sells a $750 power cable wrapped in what would appear to be plastic wire loom.

Yeah, that's where the alarms started going off in my head for sure.

In one of the emails he and I exchanged there was the suggestion that I buy a "good, quality cable at least $400 for this coax audio cablewith a BNC connector on at least one end to get the most out of this BNC 75 ohm mod off the DAC1"

$400 coax cables? No!

[manaox2]

Second bump from the dead on this.

Its been hard to find a 24/96 or better USB-i2s adapter, so I've been looking at the new empirical audio Off-ramp. The Off-ramp 3 is no longer based on the M-audio Transit, appears to now be native drivers for 24/96 USB, includes the i2s, AES, and coaxial by default, and is $699 now unless you opt for the superclock 4 upgrade. That seems a lot better then the sick $1200 price from two years ago for the previous iteration.

Granted, he still charges horrendous amounts of dough for cables and such and is certainly greedy for my money, I'm still tempted to put it on a possible to buy list in the future. For now, it seems worth my time to modify a Transit myself to get straight spdif without the optical cable involved and place it inside my DAC instead of using $630 more dollars that my current equipment doesn't warrant. It doesn't seem quite right to pay that much for an upgrade from 16 bit or strongly worry about jitter, surely someone thought of something better... I bet I should probably just buy a new CD transport that outputs even higher resolution and formats for the dough.

[deepak]

If you aren't against using a full size computer personally I would get a Lynx AES16 or RME Hammerfall card and use digital out, unless you're getting a DAC that only has I2S input. This EA crap just screams audiofool bullshit to me.

[manaox2]

If you aren't against using a full size computer personally I would get a Lynx AES16 or RME Hammerfall card and use digital out, unless you're getting a DAC that only has I2S input. This EA crap just screams audiofool bullshit to me.

Thanks, I think your probably right. In an age where I could get a $120 XP desktop tower, upgrade it for $100, and then get the card and be at half the price, that would seem to make a hell of a lot more sense. I know that I should be able to tap i2s with a Juli@ or other cards.

[deepak]

I forgot about the Juli@.

The drivers for the Lynx cards are fantastic and minimal just like M-Audio's. From what I'm reading RME drivers are as well.

[manaox2]

Nice! Now I think I'll wait until I need a new computer.

[Augsburger]

Nice! Now I think I'll wait until I need a new computer.

Excuse me, I think you are in the wrong forum to be talking about waiting to buy new gear.

[AlanY]

I wouldn't buy the Empirical Audio stuff. All he's doing is using a standard USB receiver with proper electrical termination. That was a rarity four years ago, but now everyone is doing it. You'll get exactly the same thing in a HagUSB, for $99 or whatever that sells for now.

The guys who've written their own asynchronous USB stacks are worth paying extra money for though.

[peanutbutterjam]

The guys who've written their own asynchronous USB stacks are worth paying extra money for though.

Just curious, what is the technical aspects of this? Also how is it that most USB interfaces do not support any more than 16bit/48khz, but some few claim (e.g. Benchmark, BelCanto) claim that they can do 24bit/96kHz?

[grawk]

because the default usb audio driver is for usb 1.1, and was written to handle 48/16. Other people have custom drivers or custom chipsets that can handle more, and run at usb2 speeds.

[AlanY]

Just curious, what is the technical aspects of this? Also how is it that most USB interfaces do not support any more than 16bit/48khz, but some few claim (e.g. Benchmark, BelCanto) claim that they can do 24bit/96kHz?

24/96 is one thing, but asynchronous mode transfers are the key thing to look for. There are actually three ways to transfer USB audio, but the asynchronous mode makes the most sense from the transport perspective, in that the receiver can apply its own clock, rather than having to derive a clock from the data coming in.

If you have a DAC that is fairly immune to jitter, it doesn't really matter of course.

[Elephas]

If you aren't against using a full size computer personally I would get a Lynx AES16 or RME Hammerfall card and use digital out, unless you're getting a DAC that only has I2S input. This EA crap just screams audiofool bullshit to me.

x2

The Empirical Audio products seem very overpriced to me.

I've been using an RME HDSP 9632 for more than two years. RME drivers are very good and super solid. Its digital output is excellent. I use AES/EBU with a DH-Labs Silver Sonic cable (about $70 from Moon Audio) to connect it with an Esoteric D-05. I've also used it with a Chord DAC64.

Sound quality using the RME is close enough to the P-05 transport that I use iTunes and foobar as my primary players. SACD with the P-05 is better, true, but the difference isn't very large. Foobar with high quality files (eg. B&W Music Club FLAC24) is very good, too, as well as upsampled regular files, so I'm happy using the PC and not having to swap discs.

Edited April 1, 2009 by Elephas

[Tachikoma]

I wouldn't buy the Empirical Audio stuff. All he's doing is using a standard USB receiver with proper electrical termination. That was a rarity four years ago, but now everyone is doing it. You'll get exactly the same thing in a HagUSB, for $99 or whatever that sells for now.

The guys who've written their own asynchronous USB stacks are worth paying extra money for though.

In fairness to Empirical Audio, they aren't using the PCM270X stuff most people (including the HagUSB) are using, but the TAS1020.

Benchmark also uses the same chip for the DAC-1 USB, but they aren't charging that much of a premium, are they...

Hmm, so does the M-audio Transit apparently.

[peanutbutterjam]

because the default usb audio driver is for usb 1.1, and was written to handle 48/16. Other people have custom drivers or custom chipsets that can handle more, and run at usb2 speeds.

That's exactly what I thought too, but according to stereophile's Benchmark article, Stereophile: Benchmark DAC1 USB D/A processor & headphone amplifier

Benchmark chose to use a USB 1.1 port rather than the more modern and much faster USB 2.0 (which is backward-compatible with USB 1.1), because then the D/A could be used without the host computer having to run a custom driver program, and Benchmark could thus control communication to allow the transmission of bit-transparent high-resolution data. (The code to do this was developed for Benchmark by Centrance, Inc..) USB 1.1 has a maximum transmission rate of 12Mbps, which is sufficient for two channels of 24/96 data.

24/96 is one thing, but asynchronous mode transfers are the key thing to look for. There are actually three ways to transfer USB audio, but the asynchronous mode makes the most sense from the transport perspective, in that the receiver can apply its own clock, rather than having to derive a clock from the data coming in.

What USB -> optical/coax SPDIF supports this (other than the empirical audio one)? I'm using a laptop which doesn't have any digital audio outs, so bascially USB is my only option.

[grawk]

that's empirical's whole marketting basis. They're async.

[AlanY]

that's empirical's whole marketting basis. They're async.

I was under the impression Empirical wasn't async, that their whole marketing was based on electrical termination and reflections and minor stuff like that. But I admit I haven't taken a look at their product line in a while.

[Hopstretch]

I thought Charles Hansen laid the general issues with adaptive/asynch USB out quite nicely (which is to say even a know-nothing like me could follow some of it) in the last bit of marketing material for Ayre's upcoming USB DAC.