Review: Resonessence Labs Invicta - new high end DAC/amp/playback system - Page 22

Invicta is punishing you for listening to too much Diana Krall.
 

I have many more examples to show. Guess Invicta is punishing me for listening to too much of everything 

Invicta has been working almost perfectly for me except its file ordering behavior. Invicta's file ordering algorithm has been confusing to me, even after the recent software upgrade that enables "Sort by track number".

First of all, when a file is named as "numbering - file name", for example " 02 - Yesterday" or "02 Yesterday", the Invicta in some cases would display this film as "02 - Yesterday" or "02 Yesterday" respectively, but in other cases would display it as just "Yesterday" where the numbering part are omitted. Such behavior seems to be folder-dependent, but is consistent within any given folder and over time. (I.e. within a given folder, either the numbering parts are omitted for all the files or the numbering parts are displayed for all the files. Also, this will not change over time.)  

Also, for two folders within which files are named in the same way as  "numbering - file name", the actually displayed ordering of files for each folder can be different. For example, when choosing "Sort by track number", files in one of the folders are ordered as follows, which is the correct ordering: 

However, for the other folder, files are ordered incorrectly, as shown below:

Whether or not the hyphen "-" is included in the file names doesn't seem to change a thing in the example above. Interestingly, for the two folders in this example, when "Sort by track name" is chosen, files in both folders are displayed in the order of increasing numbering (i.e. 01 - xxx, 02 - xxx, 03 - xxx, ... , which you should have seen when "Sort by track number" is chosen). Note that in this example, the numbering part of the file names are displayed for files in both folders. However, as I mentioned earlier, for some other folders, Invicta would simply omit  displaying the numbering for their files. And where the Invicta does this, the files are displayed in the alphabetical order when "Sort by track name" is chosen.

I really can't understand Invicta's ordering algorithm. Are there buds? Or do I miss something? Hope some of you guys can shed some light. 

I have also noticed some peculiar behavior of the Invicta numerical ordering algorithm.  Curiously some files (albums) ordered exactly like they should but others did not.  I use ITunes to create my files and you can change certain metadata information in this program.   What I discovered is that the ordering algorithm seems to also incorporate data on the artist name -- so when I create a file made of a compilation of different songs by different artists, the track order gets mixed up.   However if there is only one artist for the entire album, the tracks play in their correct numerical sequence.   So what I did was to change the metadata in iTunes for these "compilation" albums to indicate just one artist (I inserted "various") for the entire album - in iTunes click on the entire file so you get the combined metadata page (you don't have to do this for every song), and voila all the songs play in their correct order.   If you really want to know which artist connects with each song, you would have to enter this manually in the song title field along with the song - not in the fields labeled artist or album artist.  I don't bother with this myself but some may want to have this information.  I don't know whether this would work for non-iTunes created files, but it does solve the problem for me, and it's really not that difficult to do.   Other than that, I continue to love my Invicta - just anxiously awaiting the next download to be able to do balanced headphone drive -- my adapter is still sitting in the box!

I used an Audeze LCD-2.2 with the stock balanced cable, and then also the HiFiMAN HE-400 and HE-500 with a Toxic Cables Hybrid balanced cable (I only have one of these so it had to be swapped back and forth which reminded me how much more I like the mini-XLR connections Audeze uses). So far I'll say that balanced mode is an improvement - a more spacious presentation, and more "drive" for lack of a better word. The "regular" headphone section on the Invicta is already spectacular so it's not a night and day difference, which is just as I suspected. But it does seem noticeable so far. Will it make a difference with all headphones? I don't know. But with these particular models, all planar magnetic and somewhat power hungry, it did matter.

That's about as far as I can go right now based on my limited sampling last night. I notice these findings are similar to when I had the Violectric V181 balanced amp in for review - the differences between balanced mode and single ended mode were not massive but they did make a difference. So that confirms that I'm probably on the right track with the Invicta so far. But we'll see. 

Nice. Where did you get the adapter from?

All I do is power on, activate "differential" mode in the menu, and then I have to press the headphone power button. I always use the right side button, not sure why. One press will turn both sides on. I don't mess with other settings. Maybe try powering up the headphone out after you choose differential mode?