Hi all, I'm new to the forums as well as to higher end audio equipment and was hoping you could help me with a problem I've been having. I recently bought a Sennheiser HD650 along with a Headroom Total Airhead portable amp and a HRT Music Streamer II DAC. I was hoping to get some better quality out of my computer's music archive, but have run into some issues. The airhead was able to support the hd650 fairly well on my macbook pro (particularly when using the Audirvana app), but there has been significant clipping after I began using the dac as well. The sound will distort and crackle at the beginning of any song (or even the test sound function in my mac's preferences or windows' control panel). The amp will also signal this through its clipping indicator. I've tried reverting the amp to low gain but have the same issue. I am therefore hoping for some insight into the cause and solution of this problem, thanks.
Additional information: I am using USB 2.0 and am not using an equalizer. Audirvana is upsampling the songs; I've tried out some different configurations but have the same problem; it also persists with other programs (itunes, windows media player) that don't have upsampling. I've read through the forums and have noticed others discussing poor quality sound when coupling a low/mid-fi sound card or dac with an amp of any quality. However, it seems that the weakest link for me would be the amp rather than the dac. I've currently got the dac being powered by usb (asynchronous), and have a RCA-3.5mm cable running from it to the amp. An RCA-RCA connection was initially recommended but the airhead only has a 3.5mm line-in.
Edited by TomVaine - 8/3/11 at 3:26am
