Then stop wasting your time reading headfi; with such "deep" understanding of the topic and completely "open" mind, your brain will be healthier and others will not have to waste their time reading useless comments.

    I guess I have to clarify that obviously I was referring to a computer-based source used to listen to T90, and if your source was not, agree, that would not make much sense.   For those who are interested to know more about USB cables though, I would refer to this thread:  ...

Sure, there is a lot of subjective/psychological effects here, but you got it backwards :-)   If I was the designer and knew that the components I use would inevitably change and stabilize, I would tune my product to sound best on what stage - before burn-in or after? That's why the sound...

  To ULUL's point, I did experience some burn-in with DF (1.0c); my first listening test resulted in slightly distorted, a bit metallic sound. After running it for about two weeks, this effect was completely gone; sound got very smooth and natural.   The most obvious case of burn-in was with...

You might want to check the rest of your system for "very unnatural sounding" symptom; T90 are like Beyer A1 - what you feed them, they will present to you. Also, how many hours did you have on them when you made your conclusion? If it was less than ~400, then you most likely did not hear how...

Great info, love it!   This is a kind of experience that costs a lot of money and requires great effort, and we are getting it in one neat post, for free :-) Thanks Lappy27, appreciate you sharing this :-)   I had a similar experience with Pangea Silver USB; it had more bass, sounded...

  Good stuff :-)   Let me clarify a few things. The "ignorant in this area" expression simply means "lacking knowledge in this area" so (1) nothing personal, and (2) definitely nothing offensive. Also, I am not or trying to be "right", I simply expressed my opinion - just like you did. It's...

You could (Kimber and Cardas would be two examples); they just put them in the "iPod Cable" category - although selection would be rather limited.   Or just use a 3.5mm to RCA adapter, it doesn't seem to introduce any detectable loss.

  Correct, just keep in mind that 1s and 0s are still transmitted as analog signals, and depending on the specification, required bandwidth (to transmit digital signals) could be and is normally much higher than 20KHz.   Also, just something to consider, to properly transform a square wave...

  Thanks for your honest opinion :-)   Surely it sounds outlandish *to you*, and I see no problem with that. To clarify it for yourself though, I would suggest you read HDMI spec and especially section on underlying transport protocols, cable categories, supported frequencies, signal...

Nice setup but I see one problem here (I had it too :-))   MF M1HPA is not very good match for T1 (well, in my opinion, a bad match, actually).   How do I know? I have T90 and M1HPA, and that's how I started listening to T90. While this combo has a clean, airy and transparent sound, it...

Hard disk? I personally don't know about that ... (if you were serious, of course). But if it was a joke, it was a good one :-)   NOTE: I did try Starlight 7 with a portable hard drive, for the sake of a scientific experiment :-), and all I can tell is "it works".   I tried to copy a large...

  Performance, performance, performance... :-) Also, no dedicated line out, no optical/coax input (if you need one, of course), and you are paying for a headphone amp that you are going to use as a line out (while could be OK, it is not exactly right).   DF is a very good little device but I...

Completely agree; an extra adapter makes quite a difference here.   In my case, it is Shure SE535 (3.5mm, more or less lightweight connector/cable) and MacBook Pro (USB connector feels strong enough to hold DF with SE535 with no problem).

I own Wireworld Starlight 7 (actually, two of them, A/B and A/Mini), and I can tell you there was a significant difference among all the USB cables I tried before WW S7. I tried a bunch of AudioQuest USB cables (up to $160 or so), Pangea Silver USB, and some others (including no name cables I...

      It's all about compromises when you go portable and some people are just not ready to (compromise), and I have a lot of respect for that.   For example, I would never use any kind of USB cable between DF and my laptop as it negatively affects sound quality (and *especially* cheap...

  I would not. On the power side, my Mac says that DF v1.0c requires only 200 mA (with 500 mA being available) so there seem to be no reason for that - unless you would want to use some crazy, audio-grade, clean USB power supply. Also, I remember reading on some DAC manufacturer website that...

    I have to clarify/correct my own post about the hiss/noise with Shure SE535: "no hiss" is not exactly right.   1. DF: At the normal listening level, if I try very hard, I can detect it (plug/unplug headphones) - Whippler had a point here (my hiss level seems to be lower).  ...

Agree, SE535 are very sensitive. I get slight hiss from Beyerdynamic A1 too - it is not made for such IEMs. No hiss with Graham Slee Novo though.   I am wondering if we have a slightly different hardware in our DFs or maybe just the computer? Cannot think of anything else (and I do have pretty...

That is weird. I use it with Macs (2009 MacBook Pro and 2011 iMac) and both are perfectly quiet/black - no hiss or anything I could hear, even if I max out volume. I use Audirvana (normal volume at about 9AM (the range is 7AM to 5PM) but I don't think it matters in this context.   Have you...

I just got the "old" version too, just like you did, and would not be considering the new one (I did get it through Audio Advisor that offered a free +50$ exchange for 1.2 version, if I wanted to).   My logic here is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" meaning that I already like the sound with...

You *really* do not need to (it has very decent amp already), but you certainly can, if you wanted to.   Personally, I use DF purely as a portable device (with Shure SE535), and would not even think about getting an amp as what I am getting out of DF is very good already. But again, you have...

  Why? I think because people like to suffer (through the decision making), makes life more challenging thus more interesting :-)   Is it worth it? Be your own judge (my quick test setup in order to get "AQ DF 1.0c" like sound from Meridian Explorer; something I just did by accident).   1...

  Lower noise would not be important to me as AQ DF 1.0c (version as reported by Mac OS X) has no noise I can hear with either (more) revealing Shure SE535 (36 Ohms), nor with (less) revealing Beyerdynamics MMX 101 iE (12 Ohms). For comparison, if I plug SE535 in Beyerdynamic A1 amp, I can hear...

  Did you mean Arcam rDAC or rPAC (you mentioned both)?   I have rDAC, Meridian Explorer, and AQ DF (1.0c) that I just bought less than a week ago due to $99 deal (not that I really needed it much :-)).