Quote:

danutz said:

I'm a little confused with these balanced outputs.... are these "real", "fully" balanced, as found in Audio-Gd geardescription, or ist it only a balanced connection? It's important to me, an also for everyone, who is planning in building a complete "real balanced headphone rig". I plan to use this as a DAC-only (if fully balanced) and connect it with a V181 and a recabled D7000. What do you think, am I on the right way, when ordering this nice piece of gear? Or should I immediatly go with a "truly balanced" Dac like the Reference 5 from Audio Gd? In fact, is there a difference? Thanks

Click to expand...

Seconding this as I'm planning to build a balanced rig as well.

 

Quote:

danutz said:

I'm a little confused with these balanced outputs.... are these "real", "fully" balanced, as found in Audio-Gd geardescription, or ist it only a balanced connection? It's important to me, an also for everyone, who is planning in building a complete "real balanced headphone rig". I plan to use this as a DAC-only (if fully balanced) and connect it with a V181 and a recabled D7000. What do you think, am I on the right way, when ordering this nice piece of gear? Or should I immediatly go with a "truly balanced" Dac like the Reference 5 from Audio Gd? In fact, is there a difference? Thanks

Click to expand...

As imyself's request, I am trying to skim through all the thread of D100 on erji.net (I was only following the official thread created by the designer on erji.net for answering people'e questions). Here is what I found: the designer said that the balanced output of the D100 is 4V/RMS+14dbu. Not sure if this helps. I am new to the DAC world and never touch the balanced things ever.
 
Lee

 
Quote:

imyself said:

Somehow Google Translate doesn't work well on erji.net, so I'd like to ask miyinan or other reading there:
 
Are there any problems with the D100 being discussed on that forum that haven't surfaced here?
 
Did anyone perform RMAA measurements on the D100?
 
What about the problem of losing USB synchronization and subsequent hissing as reported by npdang - any more information on that?
 
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Sure, I will try my best. I am new to this hobby as well and they use many technical words that I am sure how to interpret. I didn't see anyone mentioned the usb 3.0, but I guess this is becasue few people uses usb 3.0 yet. And no one has posted any RMAA measurements neither as the D100 is new as well on the other side of the world. Anyways, here are some of my other findings:
 
1. Power supply wall plug: The desiger simulated a listening environment where the ground connection of the power supply is less than ideal and found that the sound becomes less transparent. He recommends using the 3 pin to 2 pin adapter to solve this problem. Not many people have this problem, but based on the feedback from users who had this problem, it works very well. Link: http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=889027
 
2. low impedance vs high impedance headphone outputs and Sound Modes: The designer said that full size headphones could be plugged into either jacks, and it is more of a personal preference. His opinion is pretty much the same as project86's. He suggests to try out each headphone output to see which one you like better. And the same applies to two sound modes. So, bascially, the D100 gives you 4 types of sound combinations that you can choose from. He personally prefers to use high impedance headphone output with sound mode 1. For IEM users, he suggests to use the low impedance headphone output. Here is the link where he also decribes the sound signature from each headphone output and sound mode as well as other good stuffs, http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=869780
 
3. USB input: The designer himself and a lot of users said that the performance of the usb input is much better than performance from the coax input using many m[size=medium][size=medium]ediocre usb-to-sp/dif converters. Without any converter, he said that the coax input is better than the usb input though the difference is subtle. He suggest to use usb ports on the back of desktop computers rather than those on the front panel. And for laptop, use the one that is seperate from others (many laptop have two or more usb ports sharing one usb bus on one side, and a separate one with its own bus on the other side). He suggests not to use any external or wireless usb ports. And he refers to another thread to improve the usb performance by adjusting some computer settings. Bascially, it is just to free up more memory for usb devices by disabling those extra and unused usb ports in device managers and proirizing the background services as the usb devices are considered as background service. http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=869780 and http://erji.net/read.php?tid=872934&fpage=2[/size][/size]
 
[size=medium][size=medium]4. Foobar settings for usb input: As you can see from my previous posts, the designer perfers to set the re-sampling rate to 96khz in foobar and he thinks the performance is better after doing that. His reason behind this is that "Setting the sampling rate higher then sending it (foobar to D100) can significantly improve the linearity in the signal conversion". This is just word by word translation from his original words. As I said, I don't know if this makes sense as I am realy not sure how to interpret some of the technical words he used. Anyways, many others on the other side perfer to leave the foobar setting as what it is. I think that you are gonna have to use your own ears to decide which setting sounds better to you. But the this is only for usb input, for coax and optical inputs, there is no need to adjust any settings. http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=869780&fpage=0&toread=&page=2[/size][/size]
 
 
[size=medium][size=medium]5. Burn-in: Many users found that the D100 improve after burn-in. The designer suggests to burn it in around 150 hours. http://erji.net/read.php?tid=874393&fpage=0&toread=&page=1 and http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=895519[/size][/size]
 
[size=medium][size=medium]6. Comparison between DAH1 MARK II, D100 and DA1704: For an all-in-one hi-res solution for computer and laptop, the designer recommends the D100, especially for someone mainly uses usb input. He said that D100 has better usb input and the amp section compared to DA1704, but the DA1704 has a much better DAC section than D100 but it is much more source dependent than D100 as well. So, if your source is not good enough, the D100 is probably a good choice. He also said that only limited quantities of DA1704 were made and it was sold out within two months it's released. In regards to the DAH1, many users claimed that the DAH1 is good for the price but they could hear signficant difference when upgrading to D100 and claimed that the extra dollars are worthwile. The designer also said that the D100 is superior to DAH1. Links: http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=903421&fpage=0&toread=&page=1 and http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=905166[/size][/size]
 
[size=medium][size=medium]7. D100 MKII or D200?: Many users asked whether or not there will be a similar product from Yulong, and I actually pm him for that. The answer I got was "there will be no similar product within two years". [size=small]While I don't have any doubt in his honesty and trust his words, I won't hold my breath on this because the pace of audio device development is really fast these days, and who knows what's gonna happen two years later.  And in fact, [/size]he also posts the progress of the other two projects that they have going on there right now regularly, namely the U100 and A100. The former is an usb only dac/amp combo and the latter is a dedicated headphone amp. [size=small]http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=916393[/size], http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=886171 and http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=886129[/size][/size]
 
[size=medium][size=medium]8. Others: This thread have been posted on erji.net as well. People there appreciated and were impressed by how detail this review was. I have seen probably 4 or 5 reviews of D100 on erji.net, and there were all very positive and have similar findings as this review. http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=894620[/size][/size]
 
[size=medium][size=medium]Okay I admit that I kinda made up the 8th point, haha...8 is a lucky number/word in Chinese, so I made it to 8 points. Any sorry for my broken english.[/size][/size]
 
[size=medium][size=medium]Hope this will help.[/size][/size]
 
 
[size=medium][size=medium]Cheers[/size][/size]
 
[size=medium][size=medium]Lee[/size][/size]

VU Meters, sexy.
 

I think that's the A100 still in development
 

I guess thats an amp then?

yes, it is a stand-alone amp

Quote:

danutz said:

I'm a little confused with these balanced outputs.... are these "real", "fully" balanced, as found in Audio-Gd geardescription, or ist it only a balanced connection? It's important to me, an also for everyone, who is planning in building a complete "real balanced headphone rig". I plan to use this as a DAC-only (if fully balanced) and connect it with a V181 and a recabled D7000. What do you think, am I on the right way, when ordering this nice piece of gear? Or should I immediatly go with a "truly balanced" Dac like the Reference 5 from Audio Gd? In fact, is there a difference? Thanks

Click to expand...

I posted a question in the official thread on erji.net and the designer just replied. The answer is YES. The balanced outputs are real fully balanced. here is the link http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=869780&page=5&fpage=1

miyinan,
 
thanks very much for your effort and the info, that helps a lot!

Quote:

miyinan said:

I posted a question in the official thread on erji.net and the designer just replied. The answer is YES. The balanced outputs are real fully balanced. here is the link http://www.erji.net/read.php?tid=869780&page=5&fpage=1

Click to expand...

Balanced, here I come! Much appreciating your effort.

 

 
Quote:

imyself said:

Somehow Google Translate doesn't work well on erji.net, so I'd like to ask miyinan or other reading there:
 
Are there any problems with the D100 being discussed on that forum that haven't surfaced here?
 
Did anyone perform RMAA measurements on the D100?
 
What about the problem of losing USB synchronization and subsequent hissing as reported by npdang - any more information on that?
 
Thanks!

Click to expand...

 
I was just about to post something about this: I had my first hiccup with the D100 today. It was on all day, and today was abnormally HOT here, I think 101 degrees or so. After several hours the unit was warm to the touch, but not overtly so and not out of line with what I've felt with other gear. When I plugged in some headphones, the music had a lot of static, and actually sounded distorted like the pitch was shifted. I determined that this was only happening on the USB input. Eventually it dropped the connection altogether. I turned it off, waited a bit, turned it back on, and it was fine for about 5 minutes, then did the same thing. I left it off for a longer time, and was then able to use it like normal until I had to leave the house.
 
I suspect this issue is due to heat, but I'll have to keep testing to see if it is repeatable. There are so many variables at play including my PC, the USB cable, the heat, etc, that I don't want to really call it a problem just yet. If it is simply a heat issue, I might slap a heatsink from my PC parts bin onto the TAS1020B USB receiver to see if that helps.

 
 
EDIT On the plus side, I finally found a way to send signals with sample rates higher than 96kHz to the D100 via optical and coaxial. I can confirm that it DOES accept 192kHz and 176.4kHz material through either of those inputs. It runs out of room on the display so truncates the latter to "176kHz" but is otherwise flawless.

Would it be logical to assume that one of the reasons it was hard to tell the headphone amplifier of the D100 and M-Stage apart was mainly due to the fact they both use opamp OPA2134?

Quote:

kite7 said:

Would it be logical to assume that one of the reasons it was hard to tell the headphone amplifier of the D100 and M-Stage apart was mainly due to the fact they both use opamp OPA2134?

Click to expand...

haha...I read comments about the OPA2134  in the Matrix Cube thread too and was confused by the implementation of OPA2134 as well. It seems to be commonly used in many amps and dac/amp combos and a lot of them do have very good feedbacks here (i.e. Lehmann, M-stage, and the stock FUN). On the other side, some say that it is a cheapo chip and can't never sound good. To me, good chips are good and I'd like to get them when they are available, but I'd pay more attention on how the amp or dac/amp sounds as an overall packge rather than what chips it uses.

Quote:

project86 said:

 
 
I was just about to post something about this: I had my first hiccup with the D100 today. It was on all day, and today was abnormally HOT here, I think 101 degrees or so. After several hours the unit was warm to the touch, but not overtly so and not out of line with what I've felt with other gear. When I plugged in some headphones, the music had a lot of static, and actually sounded distorted like the pitch was shifted. I determined that this was only happening on the USB input. Eventually it dropped the connection altogether. I turned it off, waited a bit, turned it back on, and it was fine for about 5 minutes, then did the same thing. I left it off for a longer time, and was then able to use it like normal until I had to leave the house.
 
I suspect this issue is due to heat, but I'll have to keep testing to see if it is repeatable. There are so many variables at play including my PC, the USB cable, the heat, etc, that I don't want to really call it a problem just yet. If it is simply a heat issue, I might slap a heatsink from my PC parts bin onto the TAS1020B USB receiver to see if that helps.

 
 
EDIT On the plus side, I finally found a way to send signals with sample rates higher than 96kHz to the D100 via optical and coaxial. I can confirm that it DOES accept 192kHz and 176.4kHz material through either of those inputs. It runs out of room on the display so truncates the latter to "176kHz" but is otherwise flawless.

Click to expand...

look forward to your updates on this. If this is a problem, I think that I will hold my money a little longer.
 

Will D100 stop sending signal to the line out when headphones are plugged in?