[Andykong]

That is a peculiar cable to use with audio gear why is that so ?

That's because the USB input iof iDAC-6 is USB-B (Printer), so the cable can be used to connect a PC or notebook to the iDAC-6

 

[abvolt]

Thank you Andy, also are all of Cayin's gear sold in the US by MusicTeck for our 120 volt, the reason I ask I've seen Cayin gear sold on ebay by US seller's that don't offer the US 120 volt sorry if this is a dumb question, I really want to order that dac..enjoy

 

[Andykong]

Thank you Andy, also are all of Cayin's gear sold in the US by MusicTeck for our 120 volt, the reason I ask I've seen Cayin gear sold on ebay by US seller's that don't offer the US 120 volt sorry if this is a dumb question, I really want to order that dac..enjoy

That's because not all US sellers on eBay are genuinely US based.

MusicTeck is our authorized dealer, they only sell 120V gears from Cayin, they won't supply 230V products to them even when they ask for it.

 

[abvolt]

Thank you again..

 

[thecrow]

@project86 and others

i have an iha 6 incoming - particularly for my elear and lcd2

should i be looking at the idac 6?

my current dac is the metrum hex nos dac. I considerate "analogue-ish" in sound.
Nicely layered, spacious and quite detailed within that. a touch of warmth within that analogue presentation.
I am a huge fan of it with no impulse to ever change it

is the idac 6 likely to present anything better or at least significantly different enough to consider it?

i was considering the filters it offers but from what i understand they are more subtle than not

i am happy to allocate idac 6 funds to other equipment

any experienced views and more than appreciated

thanks
peter t

 

[XUPX]

I don't know how many people will read this, but in case this happens to someone else, I figured this is a good place.

First of all, I want to say thank you to @Andykong for all of the help he provided.

I have been using the iDAC-6 for a while now. I like it and it worked well.
One day, while listening to music, it stopped playing DSD files. There was white noise instead.
I found out that it was switching the output device to my monitor for some reason. I thought it was a driver issue (Windows update are known to cause issues, and they do install some of these behind the scenes sometimes, no matter what you ask them to).
I uninstalled the driver, then downloaded the most recent one. I tried installing, disabling signed driver enforcement for Win 10, but it didn't manage to install the driver.
I tried many times, but nothing worked. No matter what driver I was trying to install and how I was doing it (with/out restarts, with/out removing older driver, V3.30, V4.35, with/out disabling signed driver enforcement, etc.).
Andy asked for details, after I asked him for help and immediately made suggestions.
Eventually he asked me to update the firmware. For that I needed to install V3.30 drivers. That failed, just like every other time, but as part of it, I had to look for a certain file in the installation folder.
The installation folder wasn't there. So I searched for these files in my system, thinking maybe they were created somewhere else.
I ended up finding them in the AppData folder. It seems the installation process was unpacking the files, but never managed to trigger the installation that was supposed to follow suit.
I'm still not sure what caused that. I'm assuming something to do with Win10 being Win10. That said, now that I realized the files were there, I could manually start the install from the files there.
That successfully installed the drivers, which allowed me to update the firmware (and the newest version of the driver that will be released in North America soon).
That meant I was finally able to try and set up Foobar to also recognize my iDAC-6. Before, I could only use it with system sounds/internet audio etc. but not working as it should, as it was only using the Win10 USB Audio 2.0 driver.
Now, Foobar finally recognized the Cayin again. I still couldn't play DSD though, which is what started this issue.
I reinstalled all of the components of Foobar that are used for native DSD playback, and updated everything. Success.
It played DSD. I wanted to see that in the Cayin Control Panel. It said PCM, as did the screen on the iDAC that said DoP (DSD over PCM).
I uninstalled Foobar. Re-installed it. Figured I must have messed something up with all of my experimenting. Alas, that did not change anything.
Now I was getting flustered and went on another deep dive in Google.
I'm sure many here already know, but since 0.9.x of the DSD component of Foobar, they no longer send the signal as DSD, but pack it as DoP so that DACs that do not have native DSD capability can play it too.
That does create an overhead for this packaging (lowering the max resolution, but also causes unnecessary unpacking in the DAC).
So, I set up to find a solution for that too.
There's actually a component that unpacks it before it leaves Foobar, bringing back DSD playback.
You can find it here.
That finally brought me to my goal. A working iDAC-6, playing everything natively.
I hope this doesn't happen to anyone, but if it does, this should hopefully help. It took me way too many hours to get this solved. Hopefully someone can learn from this.

Happy listening!

 

[Andykong]

We would like to thank all our friends, customers and partners for your continuous support throughout the year. We shall take a short break to reunion with our family and celebrate the Chinese New Year. We shall resume office on 14th February 2019.

 

[Andykong]

Something interesting is round the corner, Stay tuned for ..... Canjam New York 2019,

 

[Ethereal Sound]

Something interesting is round the corner, Stay tuned for ..... Canjam New York 2019,

Ohh, that looks interesting. I wonder if it's the iDAC-6 mkII?

 

[Andykong]

Yes, iDAC-6MK2 is round the corner, see you all at CanJam New York this coming weekend.

 

[project86]

Beautiful! Looks like the iDAP-6 mixed with the first gen DAC.

 

[Rayzilla]

Yes, iDAC-6MK2 is round the corner, see you all at CanJam New York this coming weekend.

I know you probably can't say much at this time but can you tell us all that you can for now? I'm very interested.

 

[Ethereal Sound]

ditto on that. I'm super intrigued in the new idacmk2

 

[wadi]

I'm also interested in iha-6 mk2 with lower single ended output impedance and Ha-1a mk3 with lower noise floor and a more user friendy tube rolling design.

 

[Andykong]

I know you probably can't say much at this time but can you tell us all that you can for now? I'm very interested.

There are several improvement over iDAC-6, and I can give away two changes upfront:

(1) Tube and Solid State are selectable in both XLR and RCA.
(2) Genuine, independent pre-amplification circuit with 99 steps analogue volume.

and as expected, more detail will be disclosed at CanJam NYC, so please stay tuned.