[duderus]

Hello, I'm new to DACs, AMPs, and headphones... to things like equalizers, configurations and all kinds of settings.

What I own are:
Hifiman He-400i

DAC/AMP:
Herus Plus

Wires:
Impact SE Headphone Cable - 3.5mm Mono

I have concerns about my He-400i. In that i'm not sure if i am getting the most out of my headphones...
Using the Impact SE Headphone Cable from Audiosensibility and Herus Plus headphone DAC/AMP.
The tracks I play say they are only 44100Hz in my .flac tracks and nothing at all in my ,wav files (using VLC player to check).
The software i downloaded for my DAC says all i need to do is plug, download and play however when I check the windows settings for speaker properties it's just set on default...

is it necessary to check the setting to match the bits and Hz of my tracks to get the most neutral sounding track?
I imagine putting a higher Hz or bit than the track i'm listening to would degrade the sound.

 

[yong_shun]

I used Audioquest Dragonfly before with my laptop and I always set the sampling rate setting to the highest (96kHz if not mistaken) and I did an A B test for different sampling rates, seems like no difference...

 

[PaganDL]

Hi Duderus,

Please define a few things, when you say you're not getting the most from your HE 400i, what do you feel you are missing or trying to change exactly?

Are you using the highest quality source you have, eg minimum CD quality as sample rates by themselves don't mean much.

Check the following in speaker settings:
Under levels, ensure it is set to the highest volume.
Under advanced, chose the highest sample rate possible.

 

[duderus]

Some of my tracks are 96kHz 24bit or 44100/48000Hz 16bit (up to 1411 or 1536 kbps).
My .wav files say it's 44100 sample rate 1411/1411 Bit rate and Bit deptgh 16/16 bits/sample

I'm wondering if the sound quality degrades if I set the setting higher than the track themselves.
Does the sound get muddled/change if i put 24 bit when it doesn't exist for the track i'm listening to, type of thing.

There seems to be a huge difference whenever i play with the bit and Hz in my Speaker Properties / Advanced / Default Format.

Lost in Las Vegas.flac (Two Steps from Hell)

 

[PaganDL]

Hi Duderus,

Thanks for the info.

No, sound quality shouldn't or more accurately doesn't degrade if you have the setting higher than what the track is encoded at, especially if your hardware can support it, basic standard average is 96 khz or higher, it just may sound distorted or clipped if your system can't play it or potentially not play at all.
Keep in mind too unless your system & audio gear can support above stated frequencies, there is potential for damage to your gear through incorrect settings through certain frequencies though that is unlikely as long as nothing is pushed beyond spec or faced with high electrical contact.
As said, sound quality doesn't necessarily change either if your hardware can support higher sampling rates or if it doesn't exist in a track in the first place but if you add it in yourself, then that's a different story.

As stated, you should set your sound settings on PC to highest your audio output can support, if there is an obvious difference, especially for the better, then this is obviously good.
Otherwise getting something like a external usb computer interface solves most sampling issues without fiddling too much in windows sound settings, etc.

In closing, source quality always matters, the better quality the original, the more obvious positives it will be when encoded to a preferred format.

 

[FullBlownEargasam]

Thank you Duderus for making this post. I had the exact same question a few days ago and did not get many responses but you explained the question a lot better than I did. One of the issues that I found is when I set windows to my output rate of my dac/amp some things would not even play such as spotify. I know that spotify does not output at a high rate but I was hoping that I could just leave my windows settings high or if the windows settings do not matter because I am using an external dac/amp then should I just leave the windows settings at what works with most sources i.e. video games, foobar, spotify, youtube. I look forward to hearing other member's input.