[dzonylan]

Hello,

I post hoping that someone maybe will suggest some advice regarding my problem.

Some time ago I bought Asus Xonar Essence One DAC (USB drivers updated). Lately I bought Lovely Cube, and connected it through RCA with mentioned A1.
I listen to the CD's on Denon AH-D2000 with Foobar 2000 (Windows 7 64Bit).

The thing is there is completly no difference in sound quality after adding the Lovely Cube ! Believe me - there is NO difference.

What surprised me earlier that listening music directly from A1 the sound wasn't amazing at all. And still it is not amazing.
And it should be at least pretty good after buying the all above mentioned stuff, right?
To be honest sometimes music listened from the iPhone seem of better quality.
For me somethings not right.

And for sure it is sad, as I started to invest in hi-fi audio gear, after reading hours of Head-Fi forum...

Thus, I kindly ask for some advice and diagnosis. Maybe I'm doing something wrong when listening from my PC, therefore degrading sound quality? Can something influence it so drasticly?
Is there any method to raise sound quality on my equipment?

Please help.

Best regards,

Jan

 

[NA Blur]

The Essence One I tested had a headphone amp stage does your not?  If so then there should be little to no difference if the two amps are built out of high quality components with transparency in mind.  After all this is what good gear usually gives us...little to no influence on the sound reproduction.
 
The amp stage on the Essence One I tested was quite good excluding the attenuation.  The entire unit sounded quite remarkably close to my Grace m903 using USB.
 
That said one thing that may help is in Foobar2000 changing the Bit Depth to 24 bit instead of its default.  I found this it lower the noise floor both the a Grace m903 and an Essence One.
 
When you say that sometimes music from an iPod sounds better what exactly do you mean?
 
1.)  What track sounds better on the iPod and using said track with the same compression on the home system sounds worse?
 
2.)  Do you use the exact same headphones on each setup?
 
3.)  Do you use any bass or treble boosting on your iPod and non on your home setup?
 
Lastly, what do you want in your system?  What are you currently missing?  Need more bass?  Need quick and airy treble?  The D2000 and Xonar Essence One should sound quite good so perhaps it is your music and not your system.

 

[dzonylan]

Hi,
 
thank for replying and the advice regarding Bit Depth, I will test the system after the change. I use ASIO drivers, however it is possible to made 24 bit and even 32 bit with it.
 
As for the music from iPhone, I use the same music, however converted to hibitrate loseless AAC. 
 
When comparing I meant the same headphones: D2000 - they are low impedance so there is no problem.
 
I do not use any kind of bass or treble boosts on PC nor on iPhone.
 
When I was saying that the music sound sometimes better on iPhone I meant that it is more dynamic/vivid with better soundstage.
 
As for what I expect, I definitely want more dynamics, right now sound seems flat on my system. And major changes to equalizer causes sound to get irritably distorted. 
Besides that the mids sounds good, besides that this sounds nothing like it should sound on hi-fi. Bass and treble are just ok.
 
I listened to same music I listen with my headphones on some midrange Denon full size system (CD+AMP) and it sounded so much better that it is incomparable.. frustrating to be honest :-/

 

[NA Blur]

If this statement is true
 
"I listened to same music I listen with my headphones on some midrange Denon full size system (CD+AMP) and it sounded so much better that it is incomparable.. frustrating to be honest :-/"
 
then compression may be the issue although it would not explain why your iPod sounds better unless the files on it are compressed differently than the ones on your PC.

 

[Norway]

Quote:

The Essence One I tested had a headphone amp stage does your not?  If so then there should be little to no difference if the two amps are built out of high quality components with transparency in mind.  After all this is what good gear usually gives us...little to no influence on the sound reproduction.
 
The amp stage on the Essence One I tested was quite good excluding the attenuation.  The entire unit sounded quite remarkably close to my Grace m903 using USB.
 
That said one thing that may help is in Foobar2000 changing the Bit Depth to 24 bit instead of its default.  I found this it lower the noise floor both the a Grace m903 and an Essence One.

 
I own both m903 and E1, and I second that. I compared them with a ton of different cans, T1 being one of them. E1 is a great product, and you can change opamps to tweak the sound signature to your liking.
 
I ran both using ASIO through USB from Foobar2k. When I used the DAC in both to power the tube amp WA6-SE from Woo Audio connecting them both with RCA cables I was able to switch fast between the sources and there were no real differences. I could never have told them apart in a blind test.
 
As headphone amplifier and DAC the Essence One is a no brainer imo. It doesn't need to cost a fortune to sound like it