Audio-GD Reference 5.2 (New Balanced 4x PCM1704UK DAC) - Page 5

But then if you have it on 24/7 wouldn't it shorten its life span somewhat?  I don't wanna have to send it all the way back to china just to get repairs.

yea, 24/7 seems pretty silly plus it wastes power and keeps your DAC 'hot'.  At the least, you can turn it on when you get home from work (or school) in case you wind up listening and then turn it off before you go to bed.  It just seem like the average person would have at least 16 hours a day when they couldn't possibly listen to it.
 

Some electronic units hasn't got switch off like Benchmark DAC, I ve got mine which is almost 6 years old, former owner and myself left it always plugged (just unplugged for vacation time, long weekends and so on) and any problem, but maybe these kind of units are specifically built for this.

BTW finally I pulled the trigger 

The longer a capacitor is used for, and the higher the temps it is subjected to, the shorter its lifespan is. I note that lifespan does not necessarily infer outright failure (as capacitors can last fo well beyond their rated lifespan) but they do exhibit higher leakage and higher ESR and increasing/reducing capacitance in some cases. For this reason, I don't leave my gear switched on for longer than necessary.

Me thinks you will be glad you did. We would like to hear your impressions whenever you get around to writing them. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by D2Cowones 

Some electronic units hasn't got switch off like Benchmark DAC, I ve got mine which is almost 6 years old, former owner and myself left it always plugged (just unplugged for vacation time, long weekends and so on) and any problem, but maybe these kind of units are specifically built for this.

 

BTW finally I pulled the trigger 

I received a reply back from Kingwa regarding the 'save' feature of the DAC;

Please try to push tight the power cable, or change to another outlet.
The chip if can memory, it will always active. But maybe have some effect cause the data wrong.
And please ensure you want to stop push any key ,after least 6 seconds then power off.
The memory have 100,000 times life. We setting memory active after stop push the key 5 seconds just for longer the life.
Kingwa

What I ended up doing is after powering up the DAC, I set my inputs to where I wanted them and after 10 seconds powered the DAC down. The settings were retained for over 24h.

Kingwa was also nice enough to test this feature on 10 other DAC's prior to responding back. Talk about service. He truly is a stand up guy!

From rags to riches :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by rezolver 

Me thinks you will be glad you did. We would like to hear your impressions whenever you get around to writing them. :)

 

 

Thanks a lot rezolver, I hope too

My only concern is DAC19 is a piece difficult to beat in quality/cost ratio, but any improvement on it it worths, and I am sure Kingwa did it in this 5.2.

Why does the DAC19 keep coming up?  Didn't he stop making those like 18+ months ago or am I confused?  When it was mentioned the first couple of times I just assumed it was the nfb-2 we were talking about.  I realize the DAC19 had the same chip as the ref5 but you can't recommend getting the 19 instead if you can't buy one...
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by tme110 

Why does the DAC19 keep coming up?  Didn't he stop making those like 18+ months ago or am I confused?  When it was mentioned the first couple of times I just assumed it was the nfb-2 we were talking about.  I realize the DAC19 had the same chip as the ref5 but you can't recommend getting the 19 instead if you can't buy one...
 

The DAC19DSP was re-released earlier this year, but is now discontinued once again. I doubt that it will be re-released ever again.

gotcha
 

I don't even remember the sound difference between dac19 and the ref 5 anymore, even though it's on full balanced now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by petemac110 

The DAC19DSP was re-released earlier this year, but is now discontinued once again. I doubt that it will be re-released ever again.

That's it, I got mine from Audio gd (V5) early this year, I can't be more pleased with it, but I went for 5.2 as I 've got recently a balanced amp.

What are the benefits of having 4 DAC chips?  I can understand where having two would allow 1 to be used for left and 1 to be used for the right channel, but what are those other two chips doing? Just hanging out being cool until Quadraphonic systems catch on (remember those?)?

Also, just an FYI but Audio-GD now has another pcm1704uk DAC out that can be had with 2 chips for like $750 or 4 for $900.  I wonder how they would compare to this DAC?

Peace.