And... nordkapp? Notice anything? :slight_smile:

HPA4 error, a little story for you: I have recently been perfecting my cable dressing around the Benchmark based system, and optimizing speaker position. This led me to playing the excellent Isotek setup disc where the performer walks about cracking a pair of marakas to enable you to establish...

Does this advice apply only when measuring, or also when playing music, if using the unbalanced inputs for instance?

I am having a problem with the player freezing up after about a minute of normal functioning with the Music app following a power on. It then stays silent and locked for a minute or two before coming back to life again, it then stays good after that. It looks like some background activity is...

Thanks for that Antdroid. Does this kind of activity still occur with wifi off (I guess so because my battery life is nowhere near yours!)?

Interesting, so what do xposed, amplify and the wavelocks do to give this bonus (roughly)?

The HPA4 is back! One week turnround, excellent. Measures perfectly now. The tuner connected to the rca’s sounds incredibly transparent with the small choral groups that they are broadcasting tonight on WDR3 FM (no sign of a ground loop!). Haven’t tried the Pi hat DAC that caused all this...

Thanks @esauseesaw!

Well, thank you for the clarifications. My HPA 4 is shipping back to the distributors tomorrow, they have the kits, apparently. Would just point out that its possible to fit the foam formers in the packing box incorrectly and thus load the volume knob rather dangerously. The formers go front...

I expect the DAC3 B will sound better than the HGC by virtue of the removal of all the extraneous circuitry, servos etc and the interference they would create inside the enclosure :wink:. Looking forward to it!

Nice one John. The biggest surprise I have ever had on a forum! I think I agree with YooperAudio! Am I allowed to mention this at the Bonn hifi show tomorrow morning?

Hold on, what's that...

Yep. Very difficult to find a simple but serious DAC with high level balanced output, though. The current Benchmarks are going through all sorts of complex automated mechanical settings to get to HT mode each time they power up.

Well, it will be good to know you will have the ground loop immunity in the future if you do ever find that wonder component that only has an rca output. On another tack, now we have the HPA4 I wonder if the Benchmark guys are thinking of a simplified DAC in the 4 series that does away with the...

Agreed. What is a bit mysterious right now though is the 10k Ohms between the inputs 3 & 4, there must be another path.