RU6 drives my 600 Ohm (96db sensitivity) Beyerdynamic DT880 great offering 80% of fidelity level as heard and compared against my ZEN DAC V2 + ZEN Can stack (which churned out 15.1 Vrms). And 90% fidelity for my equally stubborn magnetic planar of Fostex T40RP MK3 (50 Ohm, 91db sensitivity). The only other dongles that can do better are CEntrance DACport HD or Apogee Groove
RU6 doesn’t have a line out so I’m not sure at what volume does it output 2v. One is dongle for mobile use and one is proper desktop DAC and are not really comparable.
I think I saw some earlier threads stating the SQ in High gain mode is not nice. So I think if I buy it, I will stick to Low Gain setting but then I am not sure if it would be powerful enough to drive Headphone.... If anyone has any actual usage experience, it would be great to hear from you!
I don't think this is a valid generalisation, it is most likely a matter of synergy. Did he mentioned the IEM or headphone he used to arrive at that conclusion?
If someone arrive at the conclsuion that he prefer the SQ in low gain mode when he is using a typcial IEM, and then someone stated that he prefer the SQ in high gain mode when he is using a full size planar headphone, are they contradictive? Definitely not. The whole point to include a gain control is to facilitate more mix and match options with different handling requirements.
Having said that, we must awared that RU6 is a Dongle DAC designed to work under the limitation of mobile phone power supply. If you plan to use it with full size headphone primarily, you have to live with certain compromise in performance. I would even suggest you to assume that the RU6 does not have enough power to drive your full size headphones, and you need to find evidence or audition opportunity disprove your standpoint. Since you are located in Hong Kong, finding a headphone shop to demo RU6 should be fairly straight forward, I definitley suggest you make the trip instead of figuring out your way to based on "I think I saw some earlier threads stating the ...."
The Ares II is superior to RU6 is all area. FULL STOP.
I heard the Ares II in a show previously, they are very competitive for their price. There is no way RU6 can compete with Ares II on a speaker system or a properly setup desktop heapdhone system.
The Ares II is superior to RU6 is all area. FULL STOP.
I heard the Ares II in a show previously, they are very competitive for their price. There is no way RU6 can compete with Ares II on a speaker system or a properly setup desktop heapdhone system.
You are perfectly correctly, but since we can only select one clock frequency as base in RU6, when we need to select between 352.8kHz for DSD output and 384kHz for mobile phone output, the decision is pretty straight forward to us, we opted for 384kHz over sampling.
The R01 is a completely different design on pre-DAC processing. We adopted a hardware 8x oversampling solution for R01 but we only use the DSP filter upto 4x, so the output from oversamling chip is either 705.6kHz or 768kHz, depends on the sampling frequencyu of the incoming bitstream. We can't accomodate the same solution in RU6 due to space, power consumption and budget consideration.
PCIe docking DAC board for computer? Never appear in any internal discussion. I can safely say this is not going to happen. If any computer manufacturing brand are interested in our solution and want to discuss OEM opportunities, our doors are opened. Producing a PCIe board might be very similar to what we do right now, but we don't have the facilities to test thousands of PCIe boards after a production batch, let alone provide decent after sales support to our users. Our sales networks are appliance based retailers, we need to develop a new sales network to sell and support the new product. This type of solution probably works better for brands like Creative or RME wjem they have approprite supporting system in place already.
Yes I guess the RU6 can't compete with a full size R2R DAC designed for a living room hi-fi system, but as my first R2R DAC, I find it to be the more musical of my dongle collection.
I don't know if I would describe its sound as "analog" but it certainly sounds as the high end CD players that I remember from the early 90s.
The Ares II is superior to RU6 is all area. FULL STOP.
I heard the Ares II in a show previously, they are very competitive for their price. There is no way RU6 can compete with Ares II on a speaker system or a properly setup desktop heapdhone system.
That makes perfect sense Andy. You have a great product in the RU6. It is my perfect companion when I am on the road (together with my Hip Dac 2 though I tend to use the RU6 more often than not) whether this is plugged into my Win 10 PC or my iPhone. I love the sound and cannot imagine life on the road without it!!! Just take our suggestions (and criticisms) here as our personal wish lists but ultimately you and your team and the best judge of what the next product should be. Looking forward to it though!!!
They sound different and I love both so much so that I carry both on the road. The iem that is currently in my rotation are the Starlight, FD5, FD7, Timeless and ZexPro. I use the EM5 when I need to be more aware of my surroundings.
This looks like a great product.
Does anyone have experience to use this to drive
HD6xx and dan clark audio aeon closed x? Both are hard to drive headphone and its seem the high gain setting of ru6 is not so good so I am a bit concerned.
If it helps, I tried it with Sundara using Balanced Out, High Gain and can get good volume at ~80. Does it drive the Sundara to it's full potential, No. Like @Andykong said it's not really designed for Headphones.
It Sounds good with IEM's and I did not notice any sound quality difference between High & Low gain with IEM's. I think I see some benefit with High Gain on Meze 99C but could just be my brain being tricked by higher volume.
If it helps, I tried it with Sundara using Balanced Out, High Gain and can get good volume at ~80. Does it drive the Sundara to it's full potential, No. Like @Andykong said it's not really designed for Headphones.
It Sounds good with IEM's and I did not notice any sound quality difference between High & Low gain with IEM's. I think I see some benefit with High Gain on Meze 99C but could just be my brain being tricked by higher volume.
From what I can find, the Sundara headphones are less than 40ohms, so I’m a bit surprised the RU6 isn’t driving them that well. My Shure cans are rated very close to that, and single-ended listening volumes are only 40-60 although high gain(?)
On another subject, regarding the RU6’s power draw with balanced output, what are you using to power the DAC?
From what I can find, the Sundara headphones are less than 40ohms, so I’m a bit surprised the RU6 isn’t driving them that well. My Shure cans are rated very close to that, and single-ended listening volumes are only 40-60 although high gain(?)
On another subject, regarding the RU6’s power draw with balanced output, what are you using to power the DAC?
Impedance is not a good sole-index to compare the laoding requirement of two headphones.
Wander which Shure headphone you are using? Shure SRH1540 is rated at 99 dB/mW at 46Ohm, SRH1840 is rated at 96 dB/ mW at 65 Ohms, so shall we use Shure SRH1540 as an example in our discussion?
The Sundara is rated at 94db/mW at 37Ω, that is 5dB lower in sensitivity when compare to Shure SRH1540. Electrically, we can rougly estimat that Sundara will required 3.16 times more power than Shure SRH1540. In addition, full size planar draws more current then dynamic drivers from the same impedance/sensitivity, so the Sundara can be even tougher if you take that into consideration.
But definitely, RU6 is not designed for full size headphones, they might work, but not necessarily desirable when compare to the performance of a decent desktop amplifier at the same price of your headphone.
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