E10, new USB DAC （ updated with photos of real E10 ) - Page 29

I still can't get the bass boost to work.  It switches everything over to more of the left side and it's unbalanced like non bass boost is.  Is it this way with everyone?

Quote:

Originally Posted by chicolom 

I'm pretty sure your supposed to set the FiiO to 100% volume/balance on your computer.  Otherwise as soon as you lower it your digitally attenuating the signal and losing resolution. 

 

Keep it at 100% in your computer settings and adjust the volume accordingly on the E10.  Set the gain to low, unless you have to go past 7 on the knob for adequate volume, then you can switch to high gain.

Got home to find my e10 delivered . . nice!  Played with all different settings and you're correct chicolom.  

Your recommended settings works best for me:

100% computer volume, gain set to low with bass boost "on".

Pretty impressive little amp/dac.  Immediately noticed a difference on my iMac . . nice punchy boost to the bass . . sounds great!

I set it to 100 % on my computer but to be honest I didn't notice any difference from having volume at 25% and at number 4 on the DAC but I will leave it at your suggested setting and leave the FiiO E10 at the notch between 1 and 2.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ciaran Van Don 

I set it to 100 % on my computer but to be honest I didn't notice any difference from having volume at 25% and at number 4 on the DAC but I will leave it at your suggested setting and leave the FiiO E10 at the notch between 1 and 2.

Do you have the E10 on low gain?  If your at volume 1-2 you must be using some sensitive low impedance IEMs or something.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ciaran Van Don 

I set it to 100 % on my computer but to be honest I didn't notice any difference from having volume at 25% and at number 4 on the DAC but I will leave it at your suggested setting and leave the FiiO E10 at the notch between 1 and 2.

Yeah, that's how I'm using it right now.  At 100%, I also listen between 1 and 2 on low gain  . . .  this thing is pretty loud and don't see myself going past 4 very much.  Nice little amp/dac! . . .  

I'm pretty new to this "audiophile stuff" and definitely can see how addicting and expensive this hobby/obsession can be . . 

I'm using a set of JVC HA M750 with low impedance of about 32 oHMs and it's on low gain and I'm getting plenty of volume.  I guess these headphones are pretty damn easy to drive but they sound pretty impressive for a cheap 'can' - the FiiO E10 has really helped them especially in the bass department giving them really good extension but somewhat controlled as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ciaran Van Don 

I'm using a set of JVC HA M750 with low impedance of about 32 oHMs and it's on low gain and I'm getting plenty of volume.  I guess these headphones are pretty damn easy to drive but they sound pretty impressive for a cheap 'can' - the FiiO E10 has really helped them especially in the bass department giving them really good extension but somewhat controlled as well.

Okay.  Ya, 32 ohms is pretty low.  I can see that only needing  < 2 volume. 

I'm pretty sure you are wrong about 100%, chicolom. Sound volume set to max is important when sending analog signal, say from a PC headphone plug or MP3 player to an amp.

FiiO E10 is a DAC (Digital Audio Converter) and an amplifier in one piece. Computer sends a DIGITAL signal (zeros and ones) to the DAC where it gets converted into analog and amplified then. Sound volume setting on a computer does not affect sound quality.

It's OK to set any sound volume on the computer. The higher it is set, the less you will need to turn the knob to go from quiet to unbearably loud. So it's more about the preference of how much you want volume to change by turning the knob.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chicolom 

I'm pretty sure your supposed to set the FiiO to 100% volume/balance on your computer.  Otherwise as soon as you lower it your digitally attenuating the signal and losing resolution. 

 

Keep it at 100% in your computer settings and adjust the volume accordingly on the E10.  Set the gain to low, unless you have to go past 7 on the knob for adequate volume, then you can switch to high gain.

Quote:

Originally Posted by active 

I'm, pretty sure you are wrong about 100%, chicolom. Sound volume set to max is important when sending analog signal, say from a PC headphone plug or MP3 player to an amp.

FiiO E10 is a DAC (Digital Audio Converter) and an amplifier in one piece. Computer sends a DIGITAL signal (zeros and ones) to the DAC where it gets converted into analog and amplified then. Sound volume setting on a computer does not affect sound quality.

It's OK to set any sound volume on the computer. The higher it is set, the less you will need to turn the knob to go from quiet to unbearably loud. So it's more about the preference of how much you want volume to change by turning the knob.

 

Thanks, I'm aware how DACS work.

That what's I used to think as well ^.   But apparently digital volume control does have an impact on a digital signal.

Technically as soon as you affect the volume of the original song through digital volume control, you no longer have bit-perfect playback.  I volume of 90% multiplies the original signal by .9, and 25% would multiply it by .25.  Replay gain is the same, it multiplies the signal by a factor either <1 or >1. 

A quote from http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Intro/SQ/VolumeControl.htm :

"One easy example is applying volume control. If you change the volume to 90% for example, the software will multiply all the digital audio data by 0.9. The result is rarely an exactly 16-bit word, just like dividing regular numbers often results in non-integer numbers. It usually has a remainder...which will require more bits (digits, or decimal places in regular numbers). If the data path is limited to 16-bit, the remainders will be truncated. That's analogous to dividing 10 by 3, and having a result of 3. With extra digits available, a more accurate result of 3.333... can be achieved."

So the digital signal does get changed.

I recommend reading through some of that website ^, its got a lot of information about computer audio that head-fiers would probably be interested in.  I learned a lot by browsing through it. 

Kevin, the CTO of High Resolution Technologies   himself sent me this in an email regarding their HeadStreamer DAC:

"The one feature very worthy of noting is that the attenuator is under complete host (computer) control but is a purely analog device.  This approach avoids the resolution robbing downside of a computer digital attenuator and simultaneously avoids the poor tracking of a potentiometer (knob) based volume control.  Effective, this is the best of both approaches and avoids all the downsides.

In case anyone is still reading/interested, some other things that kill bit perfect playback are resampling of the signal to a shared bit depth/sample rate.  This is why people use ASIO and WASAPI in media players, because it bypasses the windows audio mixer. 

If you send a signal to the windows audio engine, it will convert it to a 32 bit float bit depth and also convert it to a common shared sample rate.  This is because sound cards (DACs included) can only run at one sample rate at at time, so if you want to multiple sounds from the OS and different applications simultaneously, the need to all be converted to the same sample rate.

So for bit perfect playback, you need to not digitally attenuate the signal, not convert it to a 32 bit float, and not perform sample rate conversion.

WASAPI exclusive is useful in bypassing the latter two (bit/sample rate conversion).  When enabled in a music player, the music stream takes priority over other computer sounds (aka, they don't sound).  This is because it matches the bit depth and sample rate to music files native properties (the computer sounds don't fit into that sample rate, so they don't sound).  Instead of using a common shared stream, it uses an exclusive stream for the music file.

Now, I don't know how much loss in resolution these conversions actually cause.  

It's quite easy to setup your sytem to avoid them though, so why not do it? 

[ I will say that I do use replay gain when playing my music on random.  If i decide to listen through several tracks on the same album, I click it off.  Replay gain also likes to amp piano music a little too much making it clip occasionally :\ ]

A lot of letters, but might be  a good point. On a practical side - I've set 70% volume on computer and ~2.5 on E10, then 30% on computer and ~6 on E10. My ears/brain did notice any difference in sound quality compared to 100% volume on computer and ~2 on E10. I mean any of these settings sound the same to me. MP3's in 320kbs CBR.

There must be some threads on this topic already. The question is what really being sent over USB to the DAC - less infromation or same amount together with sound level information. 

FiiO is active on this forum. Would be interesting to hear their opinion.

It seems to me that there is some kind of problem with your E10. If it keeps doing that, I think you should activate the warranty... 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by jschristian44 

I still can't get the bass boost to work.  It switches everything over to more of the left side and it's unbalanced like non bass boost is.  Is it this way with everyone?

(hope someone can answer this for me):

On my iMac (27" 2011), I noticed an "Audio MIDI setup" under utilities with pre-set drop down settings for my FiiO E10.  Wasn't quite sure what this is and if I should change any of the default settings, specifically the "format".

Currently, the default is set at:

44100.0 Hz  2ch-16bit Integer

I have the drop down option to change this to:

32000.0, 48000.0 or 96000.0 Hz 

and

2ch-24 bit Integer or Encoded Digital Audio

Should I change any of these settings or leave it as is?

note (if this matters):  I'm using my FiiO E10 (connected to iMac with USB) with my Audio Technica ATH-M50 and most of my listening is my iTunes files/music at 256 kbps

Thanks

Quote:

Originally Posted by curtisinoc 

On my iMac (27" 2011), I noticed an "Audio MIDI setup" under utilities with pre-set drop down settings for my FiiO E10.  Wasn't quite sure what this is and if I should change any of the default settings, specifically the "format".

 

Currently, the default is set at:

44100.0 Hz  2ch-16bit Integer

 

I have the drop down option to change this to:

32000.0, 48000.0 or 96000.0 Hz 

and

2ch-24 bit Integer or Encoded Digital Audio

 

Should I change any of these settings or leave it as is?

 

Thanks

Hi, 

Set it to 24bit/44.1khz.

You would want to set the sample rate to whatever most of your music is in.  Most likely this is 44.1khz, as this is what CDs get ripped to.  Just like windows, this is setting the common sample rate that everything will be converted to so it can sound at the same time.  If you set it higher such as 96khz, all your music will be resampled then played back at the new sample rate.  If you set it the same as your music (probably 44.1khz) no conversion will occur.

You should set the bit depth to 24 bits, as changing from 16 to 24 just pads 8 bit and doesn't negatively affect the signal.  It actually provides a benefit as you have more headroom before digital attenuation begins to affect the bits (it affects the padded bits first).

In iTunes also make sure Crossback, Sound Enhancer and Sound Check turned off.

I'm not that familiar with Macs, so I'm not sure if there's a way to make itunes automatically set the sample rate for each song.  I think some other programs may allow this easier (again, don't know many mac programs).  Unless you have high res recordings it shouldn't matter. 

As long as you match the Audio midi setup/format sample rate to the same your music it's fine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chicolom 

Hi, 

 

Set it to 24bit/44.1khz.

 

You would want to set the sample rate to whatever most of your music is in.  Most likely this is 44.1khz, as this is what CDs get ripped to.  Just like windows, this is setting the common sample rate that everything will be converted to so it can sound at the same time.  If you set it higher such as 96khz, all your music will be resampled then played back at the new sample rate.  If you set it the same as your music (probably 44.1khz) no conversion will occur.

 

You should set the bit depth to 24 bits, as changing from 16 to 24 just pads 8 bit and doesn't negatively affect the signal.  It actually provides a benefit as you have more headroom before digital attenuation begins to affect the bits (it affects the padded bits first).

 

In iTunes also make sure Crossback, Sound Enhancer and Sound Check turned off.

 

I'm not that familiar with Macs, so I'm not sure if there's a way to make itunes automatically set the sample rate for each song.  I think some other programs may allow this easier (again, don't know many mac programs).  Unless you have high res recordings it shouldn't matter. 

 

As long as you match the Audio midi setup/format sample rate to the same your music it's fine.

 

 

Thanks very much for this detailed explanation!  I'll change the setting to "2ch-24 bit Integer" when I get home and give it a listen.

 . . .  so much to fn learn about this stuff !!!!  

Is the rated output power for low gain or high gain? I assume high gain.

Output power: 200mW (16ohms); 28mW (300ohms)

It's a bit lower than E11 when set to high gain.