A first for digital music players, listeners can personalize their preferred sound with Sony's DSD Remastering Engine which lets users convert all PCM music sources into DSD 5.6MHz. The DSD Remastering Engine can be switched on or off easily in the user interface.

How about IE900 (or maybe IE600) vs. Z1R? Impressions/opinions?

NO! The USB shell comes in contact only with a part of the USB PCB ground fill (1/4, due to ground segregation on the USB PCB module). However, the whole ground fill is ISOLATED from the rest of the May DAC ground - HENCE: 1. the term used to describe the above: galvanic isolation, ground...

It is NOT grounded to the chassis. I KNOW!!! I've been modifying the old Mays USB modules. Do you even have May DAC???

Haha, you are good!! Ignorance is bliss. Did you try to confirm that rubbish of yours you have posted... and have been posting for a while?

Yeah, I thought so... trying too hard :) Maybe the below will make more sense... choose to read it, or ignore it.... The ground isolation was introduced due to the neglect that, in true honesty -> you are encouraging here, by saying that "The USB module doesn't give a crap about the noise so...

The USB module is also sensitive to noise. Its ground fill is incapable of dealing with noise due to vey small ground fill area. A very low impedance power supply ( at broad frequency spectrum, in particular in case of a DAC that can support 1,536/1024) is required to be able to deal with large...

The USB module (card) inside May is powered by the streamer.

The PC-based streamers require a very low noise power supply. This is absolutely crucial, especially if you use USB to connect the streamer and May.

Can Tidal work with both the local memory stored and the SD card stored files? I thought there was a limitation with one of those streaming apps... it works only with local memory stored offline files...??

"....and then low-pass filtered by capacitors and chokes."

It's a DSD (direct stream digital), amplified in its original (digital) form, and then low-pass filtered by capacitors and chokes. Hence, even PCM encoded audio (music files) are converted first to DSD. So, there is no true audio line out, like with a stand-alone DAC... because digital audio...

The sound stays in the digital domain. It never gets to a point where it is analog, hence - no analog out. The headphone out is a digital bitstream, filtered by chokes and capacitors. It might be okay for the headphones, but for a high input impedance, wide bandwidth amplifier (and especially...

You could change the resistor values in Phonitor, to achieve whatever gain you need. That -10dB switch can become a -20dB switch. That would be the easiest thing to do. You could even approach SPL Audio to do that for you. Any audio repair shop could also do it.