Review: ZERO 24 BIT/192KHz DAC/Headphone Amp/Pre-Amp - Page 500

deleted

how do u guys connect the DAC to the computer?? i very much prefer the sound using USB to Optical converter then to the DAC VS direct optical from PC to DAC... The sound is so much dynamic and clear.. but i experience drop out when for example when a web page is loading or occassionally drop.. what can be done to stop this??

i tried to put foobar pirioty to realtime and also disable USB power down in control panel and it does not help

Most likely you'd benefit from a second, dedicated USB card in your computer. USB2 claims a 480Mb/sec transfer rate, but that is shared with all the ports, and when other devices use the I/O it can slow down tremendously (much moreso than other technologies like firewire). Most likely starting the application is accessing the USB bus in some way causing the throughput to th converter to stutter for a sec.

If you get a PCI USB card (they're pretty inexpensive) you can connect only the adapter to it and you shouldn't have any issues.

Of course it could be something else...

What u have heard is because of the computer interface with the converter.

The most important parameter in the converter is the frequency source, which relate to power supply regulation and the JITTER.

that's why u can never hear good sound on that, unless u are willing to pay for Monarchy or Trend or other signal processors. Not long into the future, there will be a product, cost effective and good from the designer of OPA Earth.

got my zero and the Hdam's earth and moon. In trying to mod the zero, taking the caps out of the audio path, I come across quite an offset at the outputs resp. 50 and 80 mv. Have to see what to do about it.

So after a few days with my OPA Moon...

I honestly don't hear much difference between this and the Earth when going DAC out to my MKIII.

BUT with the Zero's internal amp (and the 1364s) it sounds much nicer to my ears. More dynamic, more details - and closer to my MKIII than it's ever been. this is a nice surprise! I was never really that into the Zero's amp, but last night I didn't feel any desire to go back to the MKIII! It really feels like it just gels with the Senns better now with the Moon in the DAC section. Very cool, indeed! I'll see what more burn-in brings.

If you are using asio, you'd need to play around with the timing setting . I had mine initially down to 25ms and it would be ok on some songs, crackling on others and on a few occasions, foobar would throw an error. when I upped it to 100ms+, all problems went away

Hmmm....from which vendor did you buy your Zero from ?


Peete.

I'm using WASAPI, not ASIO. I'm just going to chalk it up to the onboard sound being crappy. I went out and bought a 1/8" to RCA adapter and am using my Audigy 2 now - what a difference that made!

Oh cool! Well now you should be able to use ASIO if you want - creative has it with all their cards.

I apologise in advance for this noob question:

I just got a Zero and the optical cable provided does not seem to be able to plug into my iMac's optical out. Do I need an adapter or something for it to connect?

Is your iMac's optical out one that uses the headphone port? You need a $2 mini-optical to Toslink adaptor.

If you have a MacBook, all you need is a Mini-optical to Toslink cable, or optical cable that has an adaptor. I haven't tried one yet, but the only place I could find somewhere that did the proper cables without the nasty adaptor was here.

Yes, that's the one.

I just went out to buy one of those adaptors and managed to plug it into my iMac, but it's not working.

Can someone help me out here?

Edit: Problem solved. It seems the cable provided is a little iffy. One of the ends was a little loose, and I swapped sides and now it works.

Hi. Just got a noob question.
Will me setup benefit from buying a zero DAc/AMP ?
I will use esi juli@ (with rca out)-- LD I+ -- K271s.

Second question.
I use a nad amp to my speakers.I would like to be able to use both amps without switching on the back of the dac. is it a good way to do this?

Can i have:
Optical out from juli@ to Zero and to the LD and
RCA out from juli@ to Nad at the same time?

Final question:
Lets say i buy the HD600s in the future and they are connected to the zero HP out all the time.will i be able to listen to the 271s connected to the LD with just pressing a button?

Sorry for the comfusing questions but i dont want to start more treads now so hope someone understand my problem