Lynx Hilo - new offering from Pro Audio company. - Page 15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper 

I guess we take the covers off then for pics.......us adolescents are so rebellious.

OK.  Sounds good.  You first! :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper 

As for the shootout, I still want to do this but not at a meet. Too much going on. I'd really like to listen to each DAC for an evening with the same material covered. We'll need to figure out a means of doing that.

A two-week group rental in the Outer Banks in July?

Quote:

Originally Posted by santacore 

At really low levels it sounded fine, but as soon as I brought it up to a decent playback lever, I heard noise/distortion.

You may have a similar problem as HappyCamper described recently in this thread.

Do check the levels of your inputs and outputs, both digital and analog for each. It's easy to overlook one setting because the screen doesn't have space to show all the information at the same time.

I encountered this as well when I first started using the Hilo.  The situation has happened a few more times during use.  Every time it has had to do with input levels being set incorrectly.

The Hilo is a piece of Pro Audio gear and as such offers more levels of control and adjustment than most consumer hi fi equipment.  The nature of the interface is such that unintentional adjustments can be missed.  As I have gained more experience with the use of the Hilo the control of the interface has become second nature.

When properly set up, the head amp on the Hilo is capable of driving my LCD 2's at full volume without distortion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper 

It is a bit different beast. I have turned everything off but the line in and out then dropped the trim to 0db and last drop your input to 0db.

Good settings to start with.  I have found that for my situations going above 0db on the input level has the potential to most negatively affect sound and cause distortion.  Output trim levels for most consumer gear are fine to +6dBV.  My Yulong headphone amp seems happy right up to +20dBu.  To be safe I usually leave everything set as you have described.

Not sure we've solved the mystery yet.  The datasheet for the Burr-Brown PGA4311 describes it as a high-performance, four-channel volume control.

http://html.alldatasheet.com/html-pdf/86709/BURR-BROWN/PGA4311/501/1/PGA4311.html

Here's a link to the current TI DAC chip product line.

http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/audio-ic/audio-dac-product.page
 

So while HC was over listening to the new speakers, we opened up the Hilo and i grabbed some pics of the chips in question.

So its got 2 CS5381 ADCs i would assume in dual mono differential configuration for the analog inputs

It's also got 3 CS4398s doing DAC duties. Two I'm assuming are in dual mono differential mode for the line outs, and the 3rd one is probably in stereo mode for the monitor outputs.

There is also a 4th CS4398 doing DAC duty in the headphone section, it also uses LME49600s as the output buffers for the headphone output.

Tried and true technology (the Cirrus converter chips were introduced ten years ago this coming Sunday), well implemented.  Gotta love it.