Preliminary Review: Headroom Desktop w/Max Module, Max Dac, Stepped Atten., DPS - Page 3

Good to know!

And having three simultaneous digital inputs gives it alot of flexibility indeed

You got me there!

Maybe the processing from USB to S/PDIF? no idea really...

when an analog signal comes in and it goes thru the op amp and poots out an analog signal to your headphone, that's one volume level. when a digital signal comes in and the DAC poots out an analog signal to the headphones, that signal probably is coming outta there at a different volume level, just fyi.

You're welcome, and I'll echo that, "Thanks to Head-Fi" with a big shout for Jude. This place wouldn't exists but for his faith that we'll keep working on becoming a strong community and that we won't forget to anti-up and contribute to the bandwidth that it takes to keep it running. So, thanks to you to, Sloth, for being a contributing member...and for taking advantage of our Head-Fi discount.

I think that there is such a thing as burn in. I tend to think that your "head" burns in probably just as much as the gear as that big psychoacoustic adaptive filter between your ears does its job. I reckon that our amps are 99% of what they're going to be right out of the box. But I do believe parts do break in and sound smoother over the first little while. My problem is that I rarely listen to a brand new piece of gear with the sort of obsesiveness that someone who has just bought a new toy does and I also listen to too many different things, that adds up to never getting to experience just "how much" a piece of gear "breaks in".

As for what break-in is...well, that depends on what is doing the breaking in. In headphone and speaker drivers it's usually considered that the surrounds (the mechanical suspension system that attaches the driving element around its perimiter to its housing) loosen up a bit and become more uniformly flexable after a bit of use. Electronic componants don't have any mechanically moving parts in the normal sense, but as electrons move back and forth through the part electrostatic and electromagnetic fields expand and colapse through the body of the part. Audiophiles posit that the dialectric and permiability (a materials electrostatic and magnetic impeading character respectively) propertives of componants go through an alignmant process that causes the part to sound less grainy.

Here is how Cardas describes burn in:

http://www.cardas.com/content.php?ar...Cable+Break-In

Its about the only non voodoo writeup I know of. Its based on cables but applies to pretty much everything. As for USB vs. Toslink output level assumming the same data 1/0 is passed to the DAC it should result in the same volume. Attenuation over long runs of USB cable may make a 1 a 0 but that would be some serious attenuation. Digitally I believe lower volume is from bit shifting.

Thomas knows this better than I do.