Review: ZERO 24 BIT/192KHz DAC/Headphone Amp/Pre-Amp - Page 609

So guys is it still worth it?

I'm looking for a USB/DAC/Amp that can play 24/96. This isn't the one?

Edit: Without a loss of quality, considering I have access to all my favorite songs in 24/96 lossless vinyl rips. Almost.

I wonder if it would be beneficial to pair a DAC such as this one with an inexpensive (ie. not very high quality) amp, such as the Pro-Ject HeadBox II? This would be connected to a computer audio source (Soundblaster X-Fi)

There are no cheap DAC's that have 24/96 USB ability....that is an expensive addition that would cost in excess of what a fully loaded Zero would go for (HDAM + LT1364's in the head amp section) all by itself. The problem with 24/96 over USB is the hardware number one and the software coding needed to talk to that hardware. The license for the technology is 25KUS......then you need to buy the chips and appropriate surrounding circuitry to make it work at a high level of fidelity (ASYNC). In a budget category no DAC I know of has 24/96 ability over USB. The obvious thing to do is get yourself a SC that can pass bit-perfect data streams via SPDIF COAX bypassing the need for USB.......lots of good quality SC's these days have decent COAX outputs......the bonus to that solution is the COAX/SPDIF interface has loads less jitter than the cheap USB sections these dacs use.

Peete.

Hello,

I am new to this whole thing and after looking at different kinds of DACs I bought the ZERO from coolfungadget on ebay. I can honestly say that I am very pleased since before I was just running my HD280 through my laptop output with itunes. Im now using foobar200 with wasapi though usb to the Zero DAC to my HD280. My question is that when I bought the Zero there were two options with USB one with OPA2604 and one with OPA627. The Zero with the OPA627 was $10 more and I ended up buying that one since I thought it would be better. I was thinking of opgrading to a HDAM OPA moon. On the website н¨ÍøÒ³ 1 it says that if you have the OPA627 you would only need the single OPA, if you had the OPA2604 you would need the Dual. I dont understand what this means. why would you need a dual one for the other one? Is having a dual better than having a single one? im sorry if this is obvious but im new to all of this...

thank you

The 627's are 'mono' i.e. you need two of them. The others are 'stereo' With the 627's, it comes with a 'brown dog' adapter to make it fit. You'll see it if you open it up.

OK Guys, I'm on P.90 if this thread and my Zero is in customs awaiting shipment to me.
I'm going to be using the Zero as a Dac only, driving a Yaqin 10L (Dynaco ST-70 on steroids) driving Stax Lambda Pros (Eq'ed to flat response). The input will be either a 20 year old Pioneer Elite PDR-05 or a 15 year old Pioneer Elite PDR-19RW (I have both). I don't know if the opamp moded Zero will best the Elite on board dacs but what opamp(s) do you think might have the best chance. I ask because it is really hard to seperate out thise of you who are using the Dac only and with tubes. The Yaqin/tube combo I'm using has the bass about as loose as I think I can go (Elite have a rep for not strong bass a laid back presentation). I would like to keep as much "life" in the mix as I can but am sensitive to upper mid hardness and siblence. I went to the Yaqin because I felt "uninvolved" a lot of the time with my Nelson Pass based amps. Thanks for any op amp suggestions. P.S. I have OPA2134s on hand to drop in.

Hi, this might have been asked before but i searched and didn't find any information.

I use win7 home 64bit with the onboard realtek sound with the latest drivers.
Now a old problem i had re-apeared. The dac relays make a clicking sound everytime before and after a sound is played.

when i had this problem for the first time, i upgraded to the latest driver and it went away and the relays stayed closed all the time.
now i have the latest driver and it's clicking again.

anyone knows a solution?

a lot of noise!

OK, another newbie here... My two week old Zero have been performing fine until last night, when the noise from it just took off. My setup is foobar->optical or usb->Zero (OPA627 + LM4562)->AKG K601. I have heard a faint noise in the highs on some recordings earlier, typically in some live recordings and the guitars in the first seconds of Rihanna's Russian Roulette. But last night, wile swapping some opamps, the amount of noise increased gradually. Now it sounds like a badly tuned FM-radio, and i have to turn the volume knob a lot furhter than before to get decent volume in my cans. I figured it might the volume pot causing it, but using the zero as a dac only gave the same results trough my 5.1 yamaha reciever (didn't disconnect the headamp though...)

Any ideas what this is all about?

And of course, it's from lawrence...

Double check the ground wire on the headamp board that is a small pice of wire that is soldered to the casing of the vol pot. Is there a wire there to begin with and if so is it securely adhered to the vol pot casing ? Sometimes the solder contact will come free making poor contact.

Here is a pic of the area I'm talking about

Another issue could be the DAC OPA was accidentally inserted backwards frying a channel when you powered it back up. Is this noise you have uniform in both channels or just one ?

Peete.

Well, i've just had the main pcb out for a quick look, did some cleaning on the back of it, found some small bits of solder where it shouldn't be. Assembled it again, and the big noise was gone! Guess i removed a short somewhere, didn't see any obvious ones though. The noise i experienced was in both channels and most distinct in low frequencies, so i don't think i put an opamp the wrong way. My Zero doesn't have the alps pot, but there is no wire going to the pcb ground as shown in your pic. Will it make a difference?

And thanks for your quick reply Peete!

That was going to be my next suggestion should the areas I outlined did not solve your problem. Unfortunately these units are made as fast as possible and the discovery of left over solder spatter on the pcb underside is a rather common occurrence. Your lucky the partial short didn't take out the receiver or dac chip which are both very sensitive to such things (and static charges). If you are experiencing no hum then your fine where the ground wire to the vol pot is concerned. The new version may have addressed this issue. Is this the new version (2009 model with USB) or the older one ?

I think you should be alright by the sounds of it. Report back in a day or two after testing it out for a full 24 hours straight. I think you've dodged a bullet but I'm glad it's OK for your sake. Nothing sucks worse than having to ship the thing back to China !

Peete.

I have owned this for maybe 1 year now? But lately the power cable of this amp is becoming loose have to kind of press it down on the back of the amp for the power to stay on, otherwise it has performed well.


I checked back on this thread because i remember there was some instruction at one point to snip some small caps on the back of the board which said to improve sound quality? Is that still recommended and where can i find out how to do that? thx

I think what you're looking for is in here:
Introduction to the Zero DAC and Headphone amplifier. - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

I did it, very easy, my first time tweaking any electronic device ( if you can call it tweaking). It brings out the bass and high frequencies better and they aren't muddy anymore.