I would appreciate any recommendations for a sealed, over-ear, isolating headphone to be used in a relatively quiet open office setting. Priorities in decreasing order are sound isolation (including keeping sound IN), comfort for hours of use, price, and sound quality. I don't like IEM or on-ear...

Can you describe the data at the coax output? In the case of PCM, is it the original data received by the USB connector, or is it resampled, or something else?? What about DSD? DoP, or PCM, or something else? Is it affected by the volume control?   - Eric

Elias,   Do the other USB models (PRE, HDR) require USB power?   - Eric

Any plans for a negative regulator board?

You can buy vinyl electrician's tape in multiple colors now, not just black. Get some white tape and put one or more layers of it on the LED. It's a bit translucent, not totally opaque. I found one piece of white tape on my Benchmark DAC1 muted the intensity of the blue LEDs just the right...

Quote: Originally Posted by EliasGwinn Inherent drawbacks include: - Double output impedance - 50% reduction of damping factor - 100% increase in noise - +/-200% increase in distortion. Benefits include: - Increase gain - Increase slew rate The damping factor decrease...

Quote: Originally Posted by ted betley Got the file accumulator report but the format/text is not decipherable. Any hints on how to open? When it asked me what program made the report I answered notepad. I guess that was not right. Never noticed that since I use emacs. It's a...

Ted, IIRC, the RATTV3 report file is re-created automatically after each run cycle, about every 3 minutes. The report is created in the %SYSTEM32%\logfiles\rattv3 directory. Check the README file in the RATTV3 group in the start menu to be able to interpret the report. For example, the report...

Here's my email to Elias from March after I solved the latency/pop mystery on my five year old IBM X22 laptop. The procedures involved apply to Windows XP only AFAIK. - Eric Code: Elias, I have great progress to report. Complicated, but great. I can use the DAC1PRE with my old IBM X22...

Quote: Originally Posted by ted betley To eweitzman: yes I would like to know more, specifically what I can try to rid my sys of these nasty pops. I did take out my opticis cable and am running pop free but I won't declare victory until I get 3 days of no pops. Ted, I'd...

Quote: Originally Posted by ted betley Ok Elias I have a problem with pops/crackles. I'm using dell xp sp2 cicsplayer -> asio 4all-> opticsis cable-> generic usb cable-> benchmark dac and the sound is fabulous. However I get these pesky pops every now and then (it went away for 3 days...

Quote: Originally Posted by gjwaudio Well... maybe, but how are you going to change the volume ? ... Laughable indeed... straight out of Charles Rodriguez... but just in case, I'm off to the Patent Office ! Sorry, Grant, but I beat you to it. 2001 prototype of the two channel...

Quote: Originally Posted by EliasGwinn I believe this is true. However, ...: Oppo DV-980H w/3x S/PDIF digital outputs pre-installed That's too cool! - Eric

furball, PCM refers to how data is encoded/represented: as 16 bit (or 24 bit, etc) periodic samples. The S/PDIF and AES3 transmission standards carry two interleaved channels of PCM and some control info, but their two channel nature is not a limitation of PCM. ADAT carries 8 channels of PCM...

You're correct in what you're saying, but there's more. Just think about mp3 playback for a minute. Two channels of stereo are encoded into 32 or so low bitrate, frequency-limited channels. Possibly with joint stereo processing that collapses some channel pairs into single channels. Or flac...

I don't have a multichannel setup (computer or otherwise) so it's just academic for me.... I just figured the single six channel digital stream (DTS or DD) would be decoded/demuxed into six independent, uncompressed digital channels before D to A conversion in a PC. This is how mp3 is played...

Quote: Originally Posted by infinitesymphony But more importantly, the DAC1 does not accept multi-channel signals because it's a two-channel DAC. You'll have to decode the DTS stream in software, then downmix it to 2.0 stereo, and by that point, it won't be bit-perfect. Or use...

Quote: Originally Posted by bigshot The best way to see how vinyl artifacting affects sound is to look at 78s. They have everything that vinyl has, except more. ... A slightly larger spherical stylus will increase the contact with the groove wall over a smaller elliptical stylus. This...

The idea of random phase anomalies creating the spaciousness was put into my head by someone on some forum years and years ago, the joelist maybe. I was glad to hear Keith attribute it to a definite mechanism at this talk. And it was just a tangential comment in response to a question, totally...

I've never seen a cartridge with channel separation spec'd at better than 30db. At best, you'll always have more than 0.1% channel mixing. Add in alignment issues and mechanical transmission and the crosstalk gets worse from there. I attended a talk by Keith Johnson a few weeks ago. He...

Quote: Originally Posted by EliasGwinn A properly designed balanced headphone amp will drive balanced headphones better then directly driving them from the XLR outputs of the DAC1. This is because the output impedance for a headphone amp should be as close to 0 (zero) ohms as possible...

Quote: Originally Posted by kool bubba ice But why didn't going balanced effect my AKG 340's? I don't notice any differences from SE DAC1 amp & the DAC1 xrl outs? They are 400 ohms. I googled for AKG 340 (K-340 I believe) and see they're electrostatics. Not much info out there...

Quote: Originally Posted by slwiser Good Stuff I have attempted to communicate some of this myself with failure. Your doing a much better job of it than I ever did. Thanks, slwiser. In the hifi (instead of headfi) world, you get to deal with speaker load and output...

Quote: Originally Posted by kool bubba ice But what about the better detail, clarity, speed, & openess I noticed? That's most likely due to the treble boost. Very subtle boosts, even 0.1db, can have these effects. I'm always wary of things that increase detail to make sure that...

shaqfu, To tell you the truth, I wouldn't mind someone double-checking my numbers. But I'm pretty sure they're okay. I've worked this out for other things before and the number seem right. I'm pretty surprised at how little current the 650s draw, but the equations don't lie: 10 volts into...