[volly]

@Ziggity - Beautiful setup mate, looks tight!!!

How's the setup sound too you?! Looking at getting one myself but will probably be pairing it with Edition X's, I don't have the heart to pull my 650's away from the Darkvoice just yet! Although I do have a balanced connector for the 650's, so the A4BL could be doing double duty.

 

[dsnedeco]

Wow. Thanks Ziggity. That was just what I needed. Got it installed and it works great. I have been using the Fostex HP-A3 for quite a while. Recently I upgraded HP from HD600 to HD800S and was really anxious to get a listen. Looks like I'll be busy doing that for a while!!!

 

[skingg]

Quick question. Equalizer APO will not work when we are on ASIO or WASAPI audio drivers, am I right?

 

[Ziggity]

@Ziggity - Beautiful setup mate, looks tight!!!

How's the setup sound too you?! Looking at getting one myself but will probably be pairing it with Edition X's, I don't have the heart to pull my 650's away from the Darkvoice just yet! Although I do have a balanced connector for the 650's, so the A4BL could be doing double duty.

Thanks man =]

I don't have too much experience with audio equipemt but what I can say for certain is that it sounds great. Everything sounds balanced and detailed, and just a touch warm which is how the HD 6XX are supposed to sounds like. But to be honest, the A4BL isn't the most powerful amp there is and you'd probably want to make sure it can drive the Edition X properly. If budget isn't a concern, maybe should can have a look at the Questyle CMA 400i. I've tried it a friend's and it feels like it does everything the A4BL does but more.

 

[dsnedeco]

Quick question. Equalizer APO will not work when we are on ASIO or WASAPI audio drivers, am I right?

Actually I have been unable to get the HP-4ABL to work with Equalizer APO. I also have the Fostex HP-A3 32-Bit DAC Amp and it works great with Equalizer APO. I have spent enough time with the HP-4ABL without success so I sending it back.

 

[volly]

@Ziggity - The A4BL spec's tick a lot of my boxes, just need to hear one now. I'm a fan of Bur Brown dac's and I've yet to go balanced. I'm not worried about power, love the Edition X's as they run fine off an oily-rag!

I had an A3 a while back, was a great little unit but gave it to a friend. Was a decent sounding Dac/amp combo for anyone starting out.

 

[ShamuellJackson]

Was looking for some random info on this dac/amp combo and ran into this thread. For Equalizer APO I use the Peace plug-in with it and it seems to work. I use A4BL with my LCD2C and It was feeling a little bass light to me so I used the combo of Equalizer APO and Peace and it sounds fantastic to me for my taste. There was some oddness where I needed to restart my PC a couple of times before the EQ settings would work at all. But after that it has worked ever since the first time I had restart it a couple of times.

 

[dsnedeco]

@ShamuellJackson it sounds like we have a very similar setup. I use the PEACE equalizer front-end for EqualizerAPO also. I had a similar experience with it being unpredictable at startup. For some reason that seems to have resolved itself. As it turns out I didn't send the A4BL back. And that's a good thing. I'm using Windows 10 so I had to get the latest USB driver for the A4BL. Also I had to tweak the configurator for EqualizerAPO to register the A4BL. I have age-related hearing loss (only on the high end) and am an extreme bass fan. Using this setup with my HD 800S phones has provided me with the best, most enjoyable, listening experience I have ever had!

 

[ShamuellJackson]

Yeah I was surprised at how well the A4BL takes to EQ settings. On other setups it always felt like I was doing something wrong with the EQ or something and got odd sounding music but with this dac/amp what I change seems like what I hear and so far I am loving it.

 

[skingg]

How are you guys outputting the playback ('m assuming using Foobar player)? Direct sound, ASIO or WASAPI? I used to set up Viper4Windows together with EqualizerAPO on my other devices; they worked until recently however both of them have never worked on the A4BL.

 

[HungryPanda]

I'm outputting DSD Wasapi

 

[dsnedeco]

Yeah I was surprised at how well the A4BL takes to EQ settings. On other setups it always felt like I was doing something wrong with the EQ or something and got odd sounding music but with this dac/amp what I change seems like what I hear and so far I am loving it.

I agree. It is so easy to experiment with different curves. I have been tweaking EqualizerAPO via PEACE for several weeks and have finally more or less settled in on my favorite equalizer curve. Keep in mind that I have a high-frequency hearing loss and that I love bass and maybe you can understand why I eventually set my curve up this way:
<equalizationeffect>
<curve name="test export">
<point f="30" d="13.5"/>
<point f="40" d="9.5"/>
<point f="60" d="5"/>
<point f="80" d="2"/>
<point f="140" d="-1"/>
<point f="300" d="-2.5"/>
<point f="600" d="-3"/>
<point f="1000" d="-1.5"/>
<point f="1500" d="0"/>
<point f="2000" d="2.5"/>
<point f="3000" d="5"/>
<point f="4500" d="7"/>
<point f="16000" d="9"/>
<point f="7000" d="10.5"/>
<point f="10000" d="12"/>
</curve>
</equalizationeffect>

 

[dsnedeco]

How are you guys outputting the playback ('m assuming using Foobar player)? Direct sound, ASIO or WASAPI? I used to set up Viper4Windows together with EqualizerAPO on my other devices; they worked until recently however both of them have never worked on the A4BL.

I am streaming from Google Play Music to my HD800s using this hardware/software:
ACER Predator 15 Laptop G9-593-71EH
Windows 10 Home 10.0.16299 Build 16299
x64-based PC
i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)RAM 16.0 GB
BIOS Insyde V1.11, 6/26/2017
Audio via WASAPI
FOSTEX USB Audio HP-A4BL
c:\windows\system32\drivers\fostexua.sys (2.2.1.0, 187.61 KB (192,112 bytes), 11/7/2017 2:43 PM)
EqualizerAPO 1.2
PEACE 1.4.6.3

 

[ShamuellJackson]

I could be wrong but I always thought when using ASIO or WASAPI bypassed any hardware or eq changes you make in windows?

 

[dsnedeco]

I could be wrong but I always thought wot worhen using ASIO or WASAPI bypassed any hardware or eq changes you make in windows?

You very well could be right. I just saw that listed in a system info print out. My system features Dolby Audio which does not with work USB audio output.