What I know about digital cables and transports has nothing to do with how I feel.
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Did you read the Axpona review in TAS? It’s on page 40 in the July/August issue. The most significant product at the show for Andre was the $64,000 kalista mantax dac. It has all the normal inputs like spdif, aes, i2s, and usb. He made the point that the optimal connection to the dac is the i2s input.
I only read reviews of DACs $100k and up. The higher the price, the more compelling the evidence.
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I think we each decide how much money we want to allocate for this hobby and then spend accordingly. My four DAC’s all use USB input and that works for me. It is not a “one size fits all” proposition.
EDIT: My main DAC’s are a Meridian Prime Headphone Amplifier and Power Supply used as a pre-amp to Denon AVR-2805 and Chord Mojo 2 used with Focal Clear headphones. Both are fed by RPi4’s running RoPieee.
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$64,000 ??? I guess it plays music live by itself. You don’t need any input, the musicians are already inside. 
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Sarky - I like it 
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Isn’t this talk of jitter and clocking on a USB missing something. I thought the reclocking is done to the DAC not the USB since the USB, and or I2S, is just a data bus that dumps into a buffer in the DAC. The buffer is a slush bucket to hold and feed bits that arrive faster than the DAC can deal with. On the bus, bits are just ones and zeros and the music time domain has not yet entered the picture. There should be no jitter if there is a buffer in the DAC and I can’t imagine a DAC or any digital processor without a buffer, even in the least expensive ones, because it just wouldn’t work otherwise. Jitter can onl enter during the DAC processing. Before it gets processed by the DAC no changes to the sound can be possible, none, zilch, they are ones and zeros and there is nothing mushy between binary values. I2C vs USB should be irrelevant.
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You perfectly nailed it. DACs can’t work without internal buffers, so at the end of the day, only the DAC’s clock matters during D/A conversion. We can cross off jitter as a problem with well engineered DACs, and all re-clockers are inherently snake oil.
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I just read your post on your Roon setup. I currently use Roon Rock on an INtel NUC which I built. I have been reading more about separating Roon from the dac by ethernet. How would I go about doing what you have done? I have been thinking of buying one of the new Mac Mini’s. My DAC is a Denafrips Pontus 15th with i2s input. Thanks Mark
If your nuc is working for you why not keep it? Also, if your dac has i2s, then forget about Ethernet and use i2s. I use the ps audio airlens between my room server that’s located outside of the audio room and my dac. The airlens is Roon ready, receives the music from the Roon server, and then outputs to my dac using i2s. Clean and simple and you can’t use a better interface. The airlens doesn’t include an usb output because ps audio knows that usb is flawed.
Your DAC supports both PCM an DSD natively over USB and I2S so there are several options available to make full use of its capabilities with Roon:
a) Direct USB connection between the NUC running ROCK and the DAC
b) Using an (relatively) inexpensive DDC like the Matrix Audio X-SPDIF 3 between NUC and DAC to convert from USB to I2S
c) Using a Raspberry Pi4 as Roon Bridge connected via USB to the DAC and communicating to the NUC via Ethernet
d) Adding the above mentioned DDC between the Pi4 and the DAC to convert to I2S
I’ve tried all 4 scenarios in my setup (ROCK on an Intel NUC in a passively cooled case and Ferrum WANLDA DAC) and came to the conclusion that there’s no difference in sound quality. So I finally sticked with the direct USB connection NUC - DAC (even if Roon recommends against it). If your Roon Server is mechanically silent (Fans, HardDrives), there’s no drawback in a direct connection to the DAC IMHO.
All 4 Options should allow for a native DSD connection instead of DoP (DSD over PCM) to the DAC so you can experiment with DSD conversion in the DSP section of Roon to see, if it sounds better or worse with your specific DAC.
As @maximasr writes, there’s no need to go for a new MacMini if your NUC is working fine. Im my experience there are even a few drawbacks with this scenario.
For example MacOS doesn’t support native DSD transfer over USB, so you can only use DoP in a direct connection to the DAC which limits the maximum DSD rate. You have to use a RoonBridge like the Pi4 to achieve that (options c and d above).
Also maintaining a dedicated (headless) Mac as Roon Server is much more hassle then ROCK on a NUC (OS Updates, logging in remotely, Wake up from Sleep etc.).
So my recommendation would be to go for a DDC like the above mentioned X-SPDIF 3 and use this in-between your existing NUC and the DAC to make use of the I2S input of your DAC.
You can even make a parallel connection from the NUC via USB directly to the DAC and via I2S, group both zones in Roon, play music simultaneously and switch Inputs on the DAC for quick A/B comparisons.
You might end up finding no difference in sound quality between the two inputs this way just like I did with my DAC.
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I would never use usb in the output stream going to the dac. For years I could have used a few usb to i2s converters and I passed on all of them. I used Ethernet which sounded better. Then when the airlens came out, I bought it and got rid of Ethernet. I could compare using i2s directly to the dac vs Ethernet and i2s was better.
I’ve used many different kinds of music servers running multiple OSs and there was no difference in sq over any of them, but all were using Ethernet, and the servers were in another room. That’s why if a nuc is running Roon or audirvana without any waits/dropouts, why change. If you were running on OS X, I’d say the same thing.
I just ordered the new Volumio Rivo Plus that has i2s output. It is ROON ready. If I am not happy with that I am going to try the PS Audio AirLens which I have read about with favorable reviews. I tried the Raspberry Pi 4 with the PI2AES Pro Audio Shield using the i2s output and it sounded muffled not crisp and clear. Thanks all for the input. I appreciate it.
This is interesting. I have had GREAT success with the Pi + Pi2AES combo and my pontus II.
I went AES/EBU not i2s.
Note that i2s requires configuration within the DAC to make sure the pins are correct and everything is set up correctly. There are a whole host of permutations, and as someone said above, there’s no standard with i2s. It should work fine if you have it pinned right, but if not, it can be muffled, staticky, poppy, white noisy, etc…
Read the manual, as they say.
I went back and looked at the settings for both the PI2AES 2.0 and my POntus 15th. They were both incorrect. I made the changes and now my Raspberry Pi4 with the PI2AES 2.0 sounds great. The only thing I am not happy with is the Volumio Premium software. It is kind of slow and not as easy to search. I have a lifetime ROON subscription and have been very happy with it.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction on the settings. Mark
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nice!
I have used RoPieee for my Raspberry Pi and it’s great. No software, really. Only a web interface for settings for RoPieee. (I guess that’s software, but there’s minimal interaction.)
I’ll be honest, tho, I use an Eversolo A6 as my main streamer. I use my two Pi2AES’s in a couple of less-used zones, but they work great.
Lifetime Roon user here, too. I would be lost without it.
(I should apologize… i see my comment “read the manual” could be misconstrued as kind of jerky. I didn’t mean it that way!)
Not necessarily in the dac. If you have a converter that is going to convert some interface to i2s, then you don’t change the i2s configuration in the dac, you order the streamer/converter for the appropriate dac. This is what you want. For over a decade, all the high end products had their own proprietary interface from the sacd player to their preamp/dac which was i2s, and every manufacturer claimed this was the best interface to use for digital. Nothing has changed. They also used it for copyright protection
I setup an Eversolo DMP-A6 for a friend of mine and he is happy with it. I thought about it also, but I have no use for a screen or DAC. I enjoy the sound from my DEnafrips Pontus 15th. I am going to try the Volumio Rivo Plus that arrives tomorrow and then I am going to try the PS Audio Airlens. That will give me chance to see which works best as a ROON ready bridge and also which has the best sound for my liking. Enjoy the music and thanks.
yeah, my gear is in a closet, so I don’t see the screen… and it goes into the pontus, so I don’t use the DAC. 
BUT: it has tons of functionality… I can add apps (like SiriusXM and Pandora), every device in the house sees it (so my kids can use it for spotify, apple music, podcasts, etc…), and the native app works great when I use non-Roon services.
Anyway, not trying to sell one, but it’s pretty great.
I have not tried the Airlens, but I’m occasionally over on the PSAudio forum, so I am familiar with it and was tempted at one point. But I just can’t find a justification for displacing the Eversolo yet!