[chaturanga]

Don't even think about powering the ME2 from the smartphone alone. It'll eat up the small battery in an instant or it simply won't work. The ME2 draws too much current (max USB 2.0 power spec. 500mA) so you'd need an external power source, which would be cumbersome. It's not really adequate for mobile purposes despite the form factor. It was designed primarily for desktop or transportable setups. A Dragonfly would have been a better choice for mobile, much more power efficient (about 50 - 70mA current draw).

Meridian Explorer 2 is not bad on battery usage when paired with an Android phone. I used it a long time with my LG V20. The problem with V20 was that it was sometimes able to power up ME2 but most times not. I therefore had bought a Cayin N3 to pair with ME2 which was easily doing the job.

At the times when V20 was able to power ME2 the battery drop was not dramatical. It was something like 1 level in 3 minutes, that means V20 at full charge can feed ME2 for 5 hours which was enough for me, because I was using it about 1 hour daily.

Using with Cayin N3 was easier. Cayin N3 was able to speed it up always with no problem.

For battery usage it was similar. With Cayin N3, ME2 was not speeding up the battery usage so much again. I was getting about same 5 hours with Cayin N3. (My Cayin N3 normally had about 6 hours of battery time). So 5 hour was not bad with ME2.

 

[chaturanga]

I'm having a problem where the second lod light is always dimly lit regardless if I player a high bit rate tracks eg flac or 320 bit mp3 file within USB audio player pro on my phone.
I remember someone writing something about this in this post about having to enable a setting to get it working? Is this true?

The second led "appears to be lit" dimly because the light reflects from the first led That is not a big issue, it's same with all ME2 s.

If you want to lit second or third leds you need to use higher sampled tracks.

When you play a 96Khz track the first and second leds will shine fully. When you play a 192 KHz track all 3 leds will shine.

Also if the track is MQA, at this case first led will lit in Blue or Green (the second and third leds are lit in white only)

 

[Tooros]

Hi All, I picked up a used me2 from eBay and it’s enroute. I have a question if I may, if I want to amp the output for hd650s - should I use the line out socket (into a mini3 headphone input jack) or use the headphone out? Any chance of damaging my beloved mini3?

 

[chaturanga]

Hi All, I picked up a used me2 from eBay and it’s enroute. I have a question if I may, if I want to amp the output for hd650s - should I use the line out socket (into a mini3 headphone input jack) or use the headphone out? Any chance of damaging my beloved mini3?

Line outs are for external amplification needs. It has a fixed out to be input for external AMPs. Such way you can adjust volume only from your AMP.

And also if you use headphone out of ME2, it will not damage your AMP that is not possible.

 

[Tooros]

Line outs are for external amplification needs. It has a fixed out to be input for external AMPs. Such way you can adjust volume only from your AMP.

And also if you use headphone out of ME2, it will not damage your AMP that is not possible.

Hi. I wasn’t specific enough. Sorry. My question is: if I connect my external amp’s input to the higher voltage line out of the me2 will it be ok? The mini3 amp I have expects a 3.5mm headphone/aux input. The headphones are then connected to the jack output of the amp. My concern is the mini3 amp. Is it capable of receiving a higher voltage line-out from the me2 or should it be better to just connect it from the headphone out connection?

Cheers for the reply by the way.

 

[chaturanga]

Hi. I wasn’t specific enough. Sorry. My question is: if I connect my external amp’s input to the higher voltage line out of the me2 will it be ok? The mini3 amp I have expects a 3.5mm headphone/aux input. The headphones are then connected to the jack output of the amp. My concern is the mini3 amp. Is it capable of receiving a higher voltage line-out from the me2 or should it be better to just connect it from the headphone out connection?

Cheers for the reply by the way.

You are welcome.

Sorry, with my second paragraph in my reply, I was trying to say that even if you would use ME2 headphone out as input for your AMP (then you will listen your headphone via AMP) there would be no problem again.

Your AMP is safe no reason to be worry.

 

[Tooros]

Mine’s arrived and it’s superb streaming tidal. Need a lot more testing. One thing I’m really not sure of however: windows settings. It works with all tidal mqa/master streams (blue/green as appropriate.) I’m really not quite sure what settings I should set windows at - the ones in the driver/device properties. If I max it out at 192/24 then all three lights are on the explorer 2 - white - even it’s it’s streaming Apple Music. If I set windows at 44.1/16 then it’s not showing anything additional if I play a locally stored 96/24 file. Am I missing something or is this ‘a feature?’

 

[sderinger]

I just received my Explorer2. Sounds great - better than my original Dragonfly for sure.

Question - I want to be able to utilize the Windows volume control (in Windows 7 Home Edition). Is that possible? Reason being my Audioengine 2+ speakers have volume control on back. Which is a hassle.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[harpo1]

Just an FYI if you purchase one of these good luck getting the firmware if it doesn't have the most recent version. Meridian doesn't list product support for it any more on their website as far as I can tell.

 

[Tooros]

You can find it via google. You won’t find it from links in their front page. I’ll look.

 

[Tooros]

You can find it via google. You won’t find it from links in their front page. I’ll look.

https://www.meridian-audio.com/product-support/dacs/usb-dacs/explorer2/

 

[PommesMagnum]

Hi,
I am using Explorer2 on a squeezebox touch and raspberry 3.
On both devices the headphone volume of Explorer is very low, on Mac it is fine.
Does anybody know how to set the headphones level on Linux?
Thanks

 

[kkl10]

Hi,
I am using Explorer2 on a squeezebox touch and raspberry 3.
On both devices the headphone volume of Explorer is very low, on Mac it is fine.
Does anybody know how to set the headphones level on Linux?
Thanks

You need to access alsamixer and set the correct volume level there.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/meridian-explorer²-impressions-thread.747327/page-64#post-14533935

 

[PommesMagnum]

You need to access alsamixer and set the correct volume level there.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/meridian-explorer²-impressions-thread.747327/page-64#post-14533935

Thanks, I can access ssh squeezebox touch and I can ssh into LibreELEC.
I can see the explorer when I type aplay-i, but I do not know how to set the level of the explorer...
Sorry but Linux and commands are very new to me, could anybody help me?
Thanks

 

[PommesMagnum]

You need to access alsamixer and set the correct volume level there.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/meridian-explorer²-impressions-thread.747327/page-64#post-14533935

Awesome, I was able to access the level in LibreELEC with this command
alsamixer -c 1
I was able to bring up the volume!

Still trying to figure out how I can do this on squeezebox touch...