Brief Odac impressions - Page 71

Quote:

Originally Posted by HamilcarBarca 

 

Dunno about the interference. But USB hubs, gigabit switches, Wi-Fi devices, etc. often come in "plastic" cases. Do they use material with better RFI and EMI rejection(?) or does it affect them too?

 

I like the acrylic case. It looks like that's a bolt-on accessory suitable for the non-electronically inclined!

Oh it affects them too, if it matters to you.  If I put my amp next to my DSL/router I can hear it (clicking) through my headphones even though WiFi is disabled.

MY ODAC SOUNDED SCREECHY!!!!!

Had an ODAC and O2 for a couple of weeks and I could hear something was not right. My Sony MDR CD570 headphones sounded really edgy and shrill. I had just changed the pads to Beyer DT770s and I thought the problem lay there. I was even looking at buying new headphones. The sound just seemed to be all boom and tizz. Now I know I have some tinnitus which makes anything above 4kHz sound really grainy so I tried to equalise out the peaks in the top end but nothing seemed to make phones sound as smooth as I knew they can be.

I checked the phones on a modded UCA222 and on my CD players. They did not sound so bad so I looked again at the ODAC. I also thought that the ODAC sounded slightly different on my netbook than it did on my PC. Since people had found that the ferrite round the cable improved matters I just wondered if the ferrite on my cable was not up to the job. I found a couple of clamp on ferrite rings and clamped them on the USB cable. The first ring, about the same size as the one on the cable,  improved matters a bit. I could hear the  shrillness was reduced even as I closed the clamp. I then tried a larger ring in which I could wrap the cable round 1 turn. This made a much bigger improvement. All the shrillness was gone leaving just beautiful detail. As far as I know adding extra ferrites cannot damage the signal because they only remove common mode noise - they leave differential mode signals untouched.

If you are lucky your USB source is clean or the ferrite is good enough to filter out what noise you have.  If you are unlucky like me the ODAC sounds awfull. If you are in the middle you may just not be getting the best possible sound. You just don't know.

So my advice is "ADD MORE FERRITE ROUND THE USB CABLE".

Then come back and tell me what you hear.

Have you tried to move the ODAC and source to a different area to see if your indeed getting any external "interference"?

or a different USB port or USB hub or different PC?

Also what gain setting are u using on the source?

Alex

I'm not convinced that the interference is airborne. I cannot believe that you can get 5V out of a box with 2.7GHZ processor and all its subclocks without some noise leaking out into the cables.

The gain is the stock low setting.

 The extra ferrite just seems to take the edginess off some vocals and the fake ambiance off some guitars. Also there is more space between instruments. Maybe its a jitter problem caused by the HF noise on the USB.

Anyway the main thing is that I am actually enjoying the sound now.

Sorry I thought you meant the gain setting on the O2. The output of Foobar 2000 is full with 24 bit word length.

Quote:

Originally Posted by doktorsteve 

MY ODAC SOUNDED SCREECHY!!!!!

 

Had an ODAC and O2 for a couple of weeks and I could hear something was not right. My Sony MDR CD570 headphones sounded really edgy and shrill. I had just changed the pads to Beyer DT770s and I thought the problem lay there. I was even looking at buying new headphones. The sound just seemed to be all boom and tizz. Now I know I have some tinnitus which makes anything above 4kHz sound really grainy so I tried to equalise out the peaks in the top end but nothing seemed to make phones sound as smooth as I knew they can be.

I checked the phones on a modded UCA222 and on my CD players. They did not sound so bad so I looked again at the ODAC. I also thought that the ODAC sounded slightly different on my netbook than it did on my PC. Since people had found that the ferrite round the cable improved matters I just wondered if the ferrite on my cable was not up to the job. I found a couple of clamp on ferrite rings and clamped them on the USB cable. The first ring, about the same size as the one on the cable,  improved matters a bit. I could hear the  shrillness was reduced even as I closed the clamp. I then tried a larger ring in which I could wrap the cable round 1 turn. This made a much bigger improvement. All the shrillness was gone leaving just beautiful detail. As far as I know adding extra ferrites cannot damage the signal because they only remove common mode noise - they leave differential mode signals untouched.

 

If you are lucky your USB source is clean or the ferrite is good enough to filter out what noise you have.  If you are unlucky like me the ODAC sounds awfull. If you are in the middle you may just not be getting the best possible sound. You just don't know.

 

So my advice is "ADD MORE FERRITE ROUND THE USB CABLE".

Then come back and tell me what you hear.

I had a similar problem and I had to use a USB hub to correct it. Non-ferrite seems better to my ears, but it's all my head perhaps. Probably impossible!

The ODAC is supposedly easy to power, but even my desktop USB ports are crap.

Unrelated stupid question but...

Does anyone find the Clip+ a tad warmer than the ODAC? I find they're both pretty flat sounding, but my KRK KNS-8400 sounds slightly fuller sounding on the Clip+. Could be something fooling me.

I never realized that the Clip+ might be kind of warm until I tried the ODAC again today.

BTW I'm loving the modded HD-600 with ODAC. I've discovered it's much better when you chop off it's upper/mid bass to neutral levels. Makes it sound crystal clear. Never have been a fan of the HD-600 until now.

I even use it for movies now.

Favorite headphones with the ODAC are the Q701 and DJ100. The KRK KNS-8400 almost sounds better with the Clip+.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdockweiler 

Unrelated stupid question but...

 

Does anyone find the Clip+ a tad warmer than the ODAC? I find they're both pretty flat sounding, but my KRK KNS-8400 sounds slightly fuller sounding on the Clip+. Could be something fooling me.

I never realized that the Clip+ might be kind of warm until I tried the ODAC again today.

 

BTW I'm loving the modded HD-600 with ODAC. I've discovered it's much better when you chop off it's upper/mid bass to neutral levels. Makes it sound crystal clear. Never have been a fan of the HD-600 until now.

I even use it for movies now.

 

Favorite headphones with the ODAC are the Q701 and DJ100. The KRK KNS-8400 almost sounds better with the Clip+.

The clip is a little forgiving and a little colored, not much at all though. It's the best portable media player I have heard in comparison to the odac. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by adydula 

This stuff is not as complicated as many of you think.

 

I use WIN 7 Pro 64 with JRiver. WASAPI-Event Mode is used. Its easy to setup for bitperfect playback from FLAC files.

 

My display is a 58" plasma display that is easily visable across the room and accessed with a wireless keyboard.

 

The playback devices is set to the dac I want to use, I have several and several amps hooked to the PC via USB.

 

The majority of my cds are 16bit/44.1Khz and I have several 24 bit cds so my playback dac settings is set to 44.1/24bit.

 

The Jriver media player has a neat bitperfect icon that glows green indicating that your in bitperfect mode and the player and OS are not mucking with the bits from the flacs....

 

Its not that hard to do and the effieiency of having intstant access to thousands of songs in bitperfect fashion is very very nice to me,

 

I went thru many comparisons to be able to trust the sound I was hearing using a PC vs a discrete player.

 

All the best

Alex

I'd appreciate it much if you can tell me how to set "bitperfect icon" in J.River Media Center.

Hello,

Well first here is what it looks like when you have it setup correctly for bitperfect playback....Notice the blue symbol.

It lights up a nice bright blue color when your in this mode.

Note: This light only lights up if your playing an audio file. It comes on immediately when you hit play and if all the settings are correct.

When you click on it this window pops up. Notice whats in the window:

Audio Path: Direct

Changes: No Changes are Being Made

Input and Ouput are matched, but in the Output you see that we are using WASAPI Event Style - direct connection.

Click on DSP Studio:

Make sure that the Sample Rate is No Change

Bitdepth = Source Bitdepth

Channels = Source number of channels

If you click on Playback Options you will see this menu pop up where you can select the various Audio Outt settings. Choose WASAPI - Event Style.

Then under the Output Mode Settings make sure that "Open Device for exclusive access" is selected.

These are the settings in Jriver that need to be correct.

Jriver will not muck with the buts...but make sure your WIN7 playback settings are correct as well...

All the best

Ale

Thank you very much for your detailed set-up instruction and now I have the correct set-up. However, I have quite a few 24-96 and 24-192 KHz Flac and APE files. Should I select 96kHz or 192KHz correspondingly in the " Output format of DSP Studio of J.River MediaCenter" as well as select 24-bit in the "Bitdepth" when I play those 96/192 files. Besides, do I also need select 24-96/ 24-192

in the Windows playback devices ( Advanced tab of speaker properties)? 

norman

normani,

All you have to do is change the advanced playback settings for you DAC in Win7 OS.

The settings in JRiver you dont have to touch....this allows whatever the source to be untouched by the player software.

I assume your flacs are really HD audio rips or downloads and then Jriver will detect this or what they are and display this in the pop up window.

Of course you dac etc needs to be able to handle these high sample rate and bit depths.

You can still change the settings in JRiver to upsample or downsample, but this is something I just do not do.

All the best

Alex

...

Any chance someone will come out with an ODAC with a S/PDIF input?

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

Any chance someone will come out with an ODAC with a S/PDIF input?

The USB interface chip is separate from the DAC chip itself, so yeah, I guess adding an S/PDIF interface should not be too difficult, but if the components are as closed (information wise) as they usually are, it can be troublesome to acquire those in the first place. 

Getting a PCB made is, however a bigger challenge as you won't find DIP packages for most of these.