An inexpensive cable improvement that left no doubt

[chrisc]

The Lumin D1 I'm using has a BNC digital connector
The amp (Devialet) has a EBU socket dedicated to digital in

A BNC socket and plug, provided you use the correct BNC plug, is a 75 ohm device (there is a 50 ohm and 75 ohm plug with a subtle difference in construction)
The EBU socket is a 110 ohm device, but goes straight into a transformer
I bought a length of 110 ohm impedance cable from MiTech Direct in Jhb. Quite cheap
Soldered on the BNC, soldered the XLR plug

Crisper sound, batter bass. Very quiet background

I can only attribute this to better timing as previously, a BNC to RCA adaptor was being used, and 50 ohm microphone cable

 

[georgev]

If i may ask Chris, do you prefer the Lumin to the streamer in the Devialet?

 

[georgev]

What differences did you pick up?

 

[chrisc]

I don't do that much streaming and have not in fact ever used the Devialet to stream. I have a Tidal account and will give it a go. Reading some user's experience, it is not so straightforward

95% of listening is used with a 4Tb SSD connected to the Lumin via USB

Reading some user experiences, there are better products than the Lumin. But there are always better products, not so?

 

[drifter]

I don't do that much streaming and have not in fact ever used the Devialet to stream. I have a Tidal account and will give it a go. Reading some user's experience, it is not so straightforward

95% of listening is used with a 4Tb SSD connected to the Lumin via USB

Reading some user experiences, there are better products than the Lumin. But there are always better products, not so?

If you want to use the Devialet on-board streamer you really need to use ROON. Since ROON introduced the RAAT protocol for Devialet, the streaming to the Devialet has been rock solid. Roon Air is a bit iffy.
https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/raat

 

[georgev]

Yeah. I stream to the Devialet via Roon.
Hard wired too.
Really rock solid and a great streamer.
Give it a go.

 

[georgev]

And your ssd can be hooked up to your core as well

 

[pwatts]

I don't quite understand: you're using a 75Ohm source to a 110Ohm load using a 110Ohm cable? And a S/PDIF output to an AES3/EBU load? If it works well, great, but there are a plethora of reasons why this is likely best avoided and definitely why there are much better solutions to this problem.

 

[chrisc]

That was the solution suggested by Devialet themselves. They pointed out that the EBU input feeds into a transformer.

It appears to offer better results than feeding an S/PDIF input on the amp. The digital S/PDIF has been reassigned to sub out

 

[chrisc]

I forgot, the second S/PDIF is used for linking 2 amps in double-mono

 

[pwatts]

That was the solution suggested by Devialet themselves. They pointed out that the EBU input feeds into a transformer.

It appears to offer better results than feeding an S/PDIF input on the amp. The digital S/PDIF has been reassigned to sub out

Transformer or no transformer, there will still be a load impedance of 110Ohms on the EBU side. The transformer does zero to change this and is anyway mandatory for EBU. Unless the transformer has a non-1:1 winding ratio (which is how proper conversion is done between these two interfaces, Neutrik etc. make little boxes with exactly this), this is a mismatch, period. If it works better than a proper BNC interface, it rather points to Devialet's BNC input being vastly inferior in design.
BTW, XLR plugs are not 110Ohms at all, it was just a convenient reappropriation of existing analog cabling in large-scale installations. For true studio-grade AES3/EBU there is a variant used (name escapes me now) using two BNC cables of identical length.