Yes, I both hope and suspect that the next generation flagship units from dCS will offer either a standard 802.3z or a proprietary fiber connection. In a way it feels we are almost coming full circle since the early days of ST optical connections, although of course this wasn’t packet based. If nothing else it would save customers a bit of money on cabling (although some seem to enjoy it)!
I hope dCS is a little bit bolder in the next generation and moves forward on the connector front. Some of the connector real estate on the back of their current units is being devoted to receptacles that are essentially “legacy” at this stage. Contrast with Apple’s approach to legacy connectors for instance (runs for cover).
This has been explored here and elsewhere and there are many fans of fibre/fiber optic here. The challenge can be noise introduced by the process of conversion back from optical to electrical (notably in the SFP module) but if you choose your FMC and your SFP wisely then there are indeed sonic gains to be had.
For that € 86.200, you can get an over-powered Xeon Server, with a separate (battery powered and QSFP connected) I/O interface module which outputs either an Analogue or an AES/EBU interface, no external Clock sync or anything mind you.
I’m just starting to go through the forums after the Xmas break and this one looks to have been getting a little heated (it has been flagged as getting a bit fractious) … I haven’t read through it yet so I don’t know who has said what to who but I’m just about to.
Before I do though I’m just going to politely ask that EVERYONE takes a moment to just chill, take a deep breath and keep it all friendly or I will close the thread.
Missed this. Lukasz from Lampizator was over on a visit in Oldenzaal auditioning the Taiko Olympus and is clearly a big fan. It is still not totally clear if customer units of the Olympus are shipping yet, as far as I can tell it is still in development.
Apparently however, since 20th Feb all new Lampizator Horizon DACs are now shipping with Taiko Link included. Apparently this is a double 5-pin XLR with dual digital connection “similar to RS-422”(!)
absolutely insane.