Fellow audio nuts and gear heads, I come to you with questions on some strange happenings encountered doing a shoot-out between two DACs and two portable amps.
First, the equipment:
Amps: RSA Hornet M & Headroom Micro 2006 w/ Desktop Module
DACs: Channel Islands Audio VDA-2 & M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard
Headphone: Senn600
Audio path:
1) Computer – FLAC – Foobar (ASIO4ALL doesn't want to work with the soundcard for some reason, sees 4 channels and putzs out.
) – Audiophile 192 SPDIF Coax – VDA2 – RCAs - Amps
2) Same, up to Audiophile analog balanced / unbalanced TRS female – TRS male to RCA female – RCAs to amps.
(The Audiophile 192 outputs balanced TRS, which of course my adding a RCA unbalances it, as the RCAs lack a ground.)
I bought the Audiophile card as a relatively cheap way ($113 @ Guitar Center, match Zipzoomfly.com) to getting a balanced source as compared to the mega buck Benchmark DAC1, Apogee Mini-DAC, etc etc.
My plan was to get the card, get high quality TRS male to XLR male cables, and run it to a balanced headphone amp / stereo preamp, etc.
Ok. I don't have the balanced amp or headphones yet, so I figured I'd try out the card to see how it stacks up against my much loved VDA-2 DAC. This is where the first interesting thing showed up.
Using both the Hornet and the Headroom Micro on "high" gain settings, with the volume turned all the way up and no music playing, the unbalanced TRSs out of the soundcard were astoundingly, shockingly quiet. Near silent. I really really had to strain to hear hiss. This was in stark contrast to my heretofore-thought-of-as-kick-all-kinds-of-ass VDA2 out of coax digital to the amps. Loads and loads of of hiss, static, and ticks even.
So that's my first question. Whuzgoingon?
1) Is the Audiophile 192 soundcard that much "better" of a DAC to offer a much better, blacker background?
2) Or is there something inherent in the digital coax interface that's noisier?
BTW, there are two analog out "avenues" on the Audiophile 192. On the dongle, there are "Main" outs and "Monitor" outs. The Monitor outputs are just slightly, slightly noisier than the Main, which is near dead silent.
The second weird thing concerns the amps, ONLY using the digital coax output from the Audiophile to the VDA2.
With the Headroom Micro, on a few songs in very specific passages, I get slight distortion in the left channel when levels peak. For instance, in Angelique Kidjo's new CD, "Djin Djin", track #13, the beautiful Lonlon Ravel's Bolero, at time stamp 51 seconds, her voice crescendos and the Micro slightly distorts on the left channel.
This does not occur in the Hornet. And no, I'm not blasting the Micro and I'm not keeping the Hornet's volume down. Both are the same level. It's almost as if the left channel of the Micro clips, but why not the right?
To add to the weirdness, this clipping / distortion does not happen at all, with neither amp, when using the analog TRS outputs from the Audiophile straight to the amps.
Whew, I hope that all made sense.
So, all this weird mumbo jumbo, and I haven't even told you what I thought of the Audiophile 192. On both an absolute performance as well as a relative price / value basis - awesome! Its analog unbalanced sound straight to the amps is very very nice. Lush, strong, and slightly smoother than the digital output from coax to the VDA2. I can't wait to try it in true balanced configuration to a balanced headphone amp.
I've stayed away from internal sound cards for YEARS b/c of first and third person accounts of how noisy and overall crummy the sound quality was. Well, this certainly changes things for me. The driver installation was a snap, everything went without a hitch except for ASIO4ME spazzing out. This I'm going to have to spend some time figuring out.
Lastly, my VDA2 is among the serial number batch that Dusty is calling home to upgrade a few things in its guts, so we'll see if any of the aforementioned strangeness evaporates with this upgrade.
Peace out and thanks!
First, the equipment:
Amps: RSA Hornet M & Headroom Micro 2006 w/ Desktop Module
DACs: Channel Islands Audio VDA-2 & M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard
Headphone: Senn600
Audio path:
1) Computer – FLAC – Foobar (ASIO4ALL doesn't want to work with the soundcard for some reason, sees 4 channels and putzs out.
2) Same, up to Audiophile analog balanced / unbalanced TRS female – TRS male to RCA female – RCAs to amps.
(The Audiophile 192 outputs balanced TRS, which of course my adding a RCA unbalances it, as the RCAs lack a ground.)
I bought the Audiophile card as a relatively cheap way ($113 @ Guitar Center, match Zipzoomfly.com) to getting a balanced source as compared to the mega buck Benchmark DAC1, Apogee Mini-DAC, etc etc.
My plan was to get the card, get high quality TRS male to XLR male cables, and run it to a balanced headphone amp / stereo preamp, etc.
Ok. I don't have the balanced amp or headphones yet, so I figured I'd try out the card to see how it stacks up against my much loved VDA-2 DAC. This is where the first interesting thing showed up.
Using both the Hornet and the Headroom Micro on "high" gain settings, with the volume turned all the way up and no music playing, the unbalanced TRSs out of the soundcard were astoundingly, shockingly quiet. Near silent. I really really had to strain to hear hiss. This was in stark contrast to my heretofore-thought-of-as-kick-all-kinds-of-ass VDA2 out of coax digital to the amps. Loads and loads of of hiss, static, and ticks even.
So that's my first question. Whuzgoingon?
1) Is the Audiophile 192 soundcard that much "better" of a DAC to offer a much better, blacker background?
2) Or is there something inherent in the digital coax interface that's noisier?
BTW, there are two analog out "avenues" on the Audiophile 192. On the dongle, there are "Main" outs and "Monitor" outs. The Monitor outputs are just slightly, slightly noisier than the Main, which is near dead silent.
The second weird thing concerns the amps, ONLY using the digital coax output from the Audiophile to the VDA2.
With the Headroom Micro, on a few songs in very specific passages, I get slight distortion in the left channel when levels peak. For instance, in Angelique Kidjo's new CD, "Djin Djin", track #13, the beautiful Lonlon Ravel's Bolero, at time stamp 51 seconds, her voice crescendos and the Micro slightly distorts on the left channel.
This does not occur in the Hornet. And no, I'm not blasting the Micro and I'm not keeping the Hornet's volume down. Both are the same level. It's almost as if the left channel of the Micro clips, but why not the right?
To add to the weirdness, this clipping / distortion does not happen at all, with neither amp, when using the analog TRS outputs from the Audiophile straight to the amps.
Whew, I hope that all made sense.
So, all this weird mumbo jumbo, and I haven't even told you what I thought of the Audiophile 192. On both an absolute performance as well as a relative price / value basis - awesome! Its analog unbalanced sound straight to the amps is very very nice. Lush, strong, and slightly smoother than the digital output from coax to the VDA2. I can't wait to try it in true balanced configuration to a balanced headphone amp.
I've stayed away from internal sound cards for YEARS b/c of first and third person accounts of how noisy and overall crummy the sound quality was. Well, this certainly changes things for me. The driver installation was a snap, everything went without a hitch except for ASIO4ME spazzing out. This I'm going to have to spend some time figuring out.
Lastly, my VDA2 is among the serial number batch that Dusty is calling home to upgrade a few things in its guts, so we'll see if any of the aforementioned strangeness evaporates with this upgrade.
Peace out and thanks!
