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.

The results from @Tobes prompted me to measure again and I pretty much confirm his figures, 280K from rca to mains earth pin and 10k between inputs 3 and 4. So I am pleased that these are actually similar, probably both the 1M resistor batch. I also get clean performance with my phono and tuner...

Many thanks for the reply John. Mine is showing infinite resistance between the input shields and chassis ground and also therefore between shields of inputs 3 and 4, the L and R shields are connected in each case however. So, as you say a 30 ohm resistors problem. For your information the unit...

Just bumping this because I would like to have a response to this question, as, I imagine, would other HPA4 owners, since this is likely to affect all units produced so far.

I was trying to establish if my unit is faulty. I have just gone looking for this resistance with my multimeter (between input rca shield and mains socket earth pin). It indicates infinite resistance. Seems like the 30ohm resistor has been missed, Is this possible (question for M or JSiau)?

No problem YooperAudio, and thanks Tobes, that could explain it. Trouble is it seems to exacerbate the problem with a Pi DAC..

That’s a good suggestion. Now, would you, or somebody else, be able to just check whether the neutrals on your rca inputs are floating or if they are earthed (to the mains earth pin, or to the rca outputs for example)? (Mine are not and it seems to cause problems). Would be much appreciated!

No problem, I'm sure you're right. Need something more expensive, unfortunately however I am grounded for a while now.. :triportsad:

The thing is, it is very configurable. I have set mine to dim then switch off after a couple of minutes, it only lights up if you then adjust something again, so the usage is nicely minimised. In an attempt to answer I have tried to compare the HPA2 and HPA4 using a file playing on the DAC2...

Hi everyone (first post)! I have just taken delivery of my HPA 4. Sounding very nice connected to an AHB2 and being fed by my DAC2 HGC (on XLR1). I didn’t know the DAC2 could sound so good! Infact I had been planning on moving the DAC2 on to recover some funds, and using a RPi HAT DAC instead...