Sligolad wrote:Had the opportunity to hear the Nige Special USB Card at the weekend and we paired it against the JCat USB card in his Super Duper Audio PC and I could not tell the difference!!!!
Nige thought his sounded a little cleaner but for me the fact that I could not tell any difference speaks volumes about his card compared to the JCat.
Both were powered with clean 5v.
yes it was a uncanny similarity in character
when the music started pearse looked at me with the "did you forget to swap it over face"
my card bypasses the clean five volts directly to usb port if its required at all
it takes no 3.3v from the pcie slot,
the usb card chipset and the clock is powered from a 3.3v lifepo4 cell
ive used a fox/expresso clock
absolutely zero rocket science
We compared the PPA USB card earlier to his USB Card and both myself and Ken thought the PPA sounded a little different, there was almost a little euphonic sound to the PPA which I liked but I was really surprised with the added detail of the JCat the The Nige Special was as good if not better.
the ppa usb has a slightly richer weightier sound but not just as good with detail and was well complemented the days version of mqn.
the ppa card is an excellent card still and sounded really good vs my card with thee old oscar peterson tracks
Well Done Nige and worth hearing for anyone interested in such things!
Final note we could not get the Renesas driver installed for the JCat so only heard it with the Microsoft default driver but still well done.
Pearse.
think the latest renesas drivers have a sq benefit alright
the issue with renesas drivers with my current mobo is
the internal usb header which i run my usb3 os as it uses the same chipset as the silverstone/modded card the chipset (ending in 202)
but if i install the renesas drivers i have to roll back the driver on the internal usb port,
as usb devices do not boot with the renesas drivers
we did manage to install the jcat driver but it also installed for the internal header so the bugger wouldnt boot any more
my guess is that the renesas drivers are likely the exact same for the jcat and silverstone cards otherwise the usb header driver wouldnt have been replaced
anyway the fastest solution was to use a spare os it had no renesas drivers on it
so more than likely both usb cards were on renesas drivers before the os swap
and definitely on windows drivers after the swap