How are most audiophiles going from streamers to DACS

op

I have 3 ways I can hook my streamer (node ) to my Dac (ares2) I just dont know what way would be the best 1-optical, 2 coax, 3 USB A to B

sorry but no you don’t, as i said earlier, you have 2 only ... the node 2i does not have a usb digital output... there is a usb jack on the back panel but that is for memory devices to read from and such, it is NOT an output

the newest iteration of the node, just released, has added a usb digital output as one the ’upgrades’ from the prior gen 2i ... your node 2i does not have that feature

https://audiot.co.uk/p-29602-node-3-wireless-network-music-player.aspx <--- read the 5 paragraphs in the detailed info prose section, 4th para down

For your setup get a Audio Quest Carbon RCA digital coax cable. Inexpensive and good quality. Or if you want to spend a little more Kimber Kables D60 digital coax. AQ has a little warmer sound.

USB

And if your equipment doesn’t have it then you need to change

I agree with lawyer203 - USB

Of course, the general answer is "it depends on the implementation of each". But a few rules of thumb are useful and I am very familiar with the denefrips.

1. Toslink is always inferior. I wont get into detail on why, but both jitter and sampling rate are worse. Pretty cut and dry. Its great when EMI immunity is required.

2. While there are different profiles, and i’m peaking very loosely, in general SPDIF depends on the clock of the sending unit and USB is asynchronous, mostly, so timing is by the clock of the terminating unit (DAC). Since the denefrips DAC’s timing ( and most of it) is vastly superior to the Node, you want the Denefrips in total control. This means USB. Any quality cable will work fine.


Important note: But you still have some ground noise issues with this direct connection, so.....

The best is to run the streamer via ethernet to a fairly quiet (electrically and mechanically) bridge that terminates the ethernet (isolation) and spits out the USB High res profile 2 data. Make sure this unit has a quiet, linear power supply. The denefrips has, again, an isolated USB interface, which helps and will re-clock and read out everything. This is how i run:

1. ROON ROCK streamer
2. Custom modified Raspberry Pi runnign Roon Bridge, with a cusotm made low noise linear power supply
3. USB cable to Denefrips (apple if you care, i dont)

Voila. Superb.

G