FX-Audio DAC-X6 initial impressions

[HotIce]

The amp chip depends on which voltage rails it is fed with.
This device is fed with 12V DC, and unless there is a boost regulator inside, it can't provide the claimed power.
Sometimes though, people misjudge the power capability when comparing two amps, due to the different type of volume potenziometers (linear vs logarithmic).
It is not uncommon to hear people say "at 1200 volume knob position, A sounds louder than B".

 

[yangian]

  The amp chip depends on which voltage rails it is fed with.
This device is fed with 12V DC, and unless there is a boost regulator inside, it can't provide the claimed power.
Sometimes though, people misjudge the power capability when comparing two amps, due to the different type of volume potenziometers (linear vs logarithmic).
It is not uncommon to hear people say "at 1200 volume knob position, A sounds louder than B".

 
Interesting. So 12V DCs is not as good as a battery powered?

 

[BassDigger]

  The amp chip depends on which voltage rails it is fed with.
This device is fed with 12V DC, and unless there is a boost regulator inside, it can't provide the claimed power.
Sometimes though, people misjudge the power capability when comparing two amps, due to the different type of volume potenziometers (linear vs logarithmic).
It is not uncommon to hear people say "at 1200 volume knob position, A sounds louder than B".

 
This is what I was trying to determine, earlier in the thread.
 
I mean, just simply having a different gain, between two amps, makes it difficult to judge the available power.
 
Maybe some think that if the volume control needs to be set to a higher position on one amp, compared to another, they assume that the 1st amp has less power.
This is not necessarily true: it could be the gain: the amount of its power that the amp is designed to use, at a given volume setting. In theory, a 0.1 watt amp, can sound louder (therefore more powerful) than a 10 watt amp, at the same volume setting. The low powered amp simply has more gain.
 
I guess the most confusing issue is that there's no standardisation for power figures; different manufacturers quote power with different criteria (into different loads, with different distortion levels, for different time periods....and then there's different types of distortion......!), and all this before you have to consider the 'honesty' of a company.
 
For me, the issue is even more vague. I've grown up listening to loudspeaker systems: my headphone journey has started relatively recently. My problem is that I'm not really sure what a headphone amp sounds like, when it's running out of steam.
I've had a totally underpowered (170mw- I didn't realise at the time) amp driving planar headphones (Hifiman + Audeze). I could turn up the volume and make the phones sound like little desktop speakers, all without the slightest sign of breakup, or distortion, or even a noticeable lessening of drive and impact, all things that are normal when overdriving speakers.
So, I think that it's not an easy thing to discern: if a headphone amp lacks power.

 

[BassDigger]

 
Interesting. So 12V DCs is not as good as a battery powered?

 
Unless the power supply is very good, and/or the battery is too small, probably not. Battery power is 'clean' power. And batteries are very good at supplying instantaneous current.

 

[yangian]

   
Unless the power supply is very good, and/or the battery is too small, probably not. Battery power is 'clean' power. And batteries are very good at supplying instantaneous current.

 
Oh, I see. Thanks!

 

[HotIce]

   
Interesting. So 12V DCs is not as good as a battery powered?

 
The culprit is the 12V figure here, which, without a boost regulator on board (which I failed to detect - but the image is not really clear, so it could indeed be there), are too low to achieve the published power figures.
Unless, as I said, they are listed as peak power, instead of RMS.

 

[HotIce]

   
This is what I was trying to determine, earlier in the thread.
 
I mean, just simply having a different gain, between two amps, makes it difficult to judge the available power.
 
Maybe some think that if the volume control needs to be set to a higher position on one amp, compared to another, they assume that the 1st amp has less power.
This is not necessarily true: it could be the gain: the amount of its power that the amp is designed to use, at a given volume setting. In theory, a 0.1 watt amp, can sound louder (therefore more powerful) than a 10 watt amp, at the same volume setting. The low powered amp simply has more gain.
 
I guess the most confusing issue is that there's no standardisation for power figures; different manufacturers quote power with different criteria (into different loads, with different distortion levels, for different time periods....and then there's different types of distortion......!), and all this before you have to consider the 'honesty' of a company.
 
For me, the issue is even more vague. I've grown up listening to loudspeaker systems: my headphone journey has started relatively recently. My problem is that I'm not really sure what a headphone amp sounds like, when it's running out of steam.
I've had a totally underpowered (170mw- I didn't realise at the time) amp driving planar headphones (Hifiman + Audeze). I could turn up the volume and make the phones sound like little desktop speakers, all without the slightest sign of breakup, or distortion, or even a noticeable lessening of drive and impact, all things that are normal when overdriving speakers.
So, I think that it's not an easy thing to discern: if a headphone amp lacks power.

 
It is also very difficult to "measure" power by ear, as even 100mW can be very loud with many HPs.
Also, at those sound pressures, human ears start to distort faster than the amps themselves, which makes it hard to detect the limits.
There is to be said that, with decently efficient HPs, it takes relatively little power to achieve pretty high sound pressures, so the claimed power figures are more of a sale pitch than else.

 

[freshmind]

Hi everyone,
 

I need a help ! When I plugged my headphone to the x6 first time, the sound was amazing. But in time, I realized my ears want something and missing from my old setup, and I plugged my headphones (ath AD900x) to my Gigabyte K1 motherboards soundcard back again to detect what is missing from my old setup.

 

With x6, soundstage significantly narrowed down, although the sound is beafy, in some tracks and movies the lower-back ground-environmental sounds, that needed treble to come up, are subdued. It is bothering me. Is it my unit (maybe defective) or is it the normal sound character of x6 ?

 

EDM, Hip-hop tracks are way better than my on-board audio (Realtek alc1150 gigabyte k3 z170) . The sound is more like melow, lush, vinly-like, warm, thick and not harsh, more bassy also. The brightnes, edgy sound of my alc 1150 is completely gone. I mean I like it, but the texture of sound, the details are gone. So, what I'm hearing is right ? or my unit is defective.

 

It is so strange, for example; a man talking=loud, thick, bassy ---- a gun blasting=nothing excessive, quieter than a mans speech. Channels may be defective ? It's kind of wrong. some frequencies sound way louder than others. In fact low ends and lower mids are way dominant than upper mids and trebles.

 

By the way the diffrences are day and night. I'm not talking about small characteristics. My other amp/dacs weren't that diffrent than each other including my on-board audio. (e10k, k3, smsl) . I'm confused.

 

What are your experiences in this aspect ?

 

[crabdog]

  Hi everyone,
 

I need a help ! When I plugged my headphone to the x6 first time, the sound was amazing. But in time, I realized my ear wants something and missing from my old setup, and I plugged my headphones (ath AD900x) to my Gigabyte K1 motherboards soundcard back again to detect what is missing from my old setup.

 

With x6, soundstage significantly narrowed down, although the sound is beafy, in some tracks and movies the lower-back ground-environmental sounds, that needed treble to come up, are subdued. It is bothering me. Is it my unit (maybe defective) or is it the normal sound character of x6 ?

 

EDM, Hip-hop tracks are way better than my on-board audio (Realtek alc1150 gigabyte k3 z170) . The sound is more like melow, lush, vinly-like, warm, thick and not harsh, more bassy also. The brightnes, edgy sound of my alc 1150 is completely gone. I mean I like it, but the texture of sound, the details are gone. So, what I'm hearing is right ? or my unit is defective.

 

It is so strange, for example; a man talking=loud, thick, bassy ---- a gun blasting=nothing . Channels may be defective ? It's kind of wrong. some frequencies sound way louder than others. In fact low ends and lower mids are way dominant than upper mids and trebles.

 

By the way the diffrences are day and night. I'm not talking about small characteristics. My other amp/dacs weren't that diffrent than each other including my on-board audio. (e10k, k3, smsl) . I'm confused.

 

What are your experiences in this aspect ?

The DAC X6 is likely showing reproducing a closer to true sound. Cheaper on-board solutions like the Realtek (although alc1150 is one of the better ones) tend to color sound heavily, adding bass and a sense of surround from dsp. My laptop sounds more bassy, warm and smooth than my DAPS because of the IDT codec settings are set in a way to try and make the crappy built-in speakers sound better.

 

[yangian]

  Hi everyone,
 

I need a help ! When I plugged my headphone to the x6 first time, the sound was amazing. But in time, I realized my ears want something and missing from my old setup, and I plugged my headphones (ath AD900x) to my Gigabyte K1 motherboards soundcard back again to detect what is missing from my old setup.

 

With x6, soundstage significantly narrowed down, although the sound is beafy, in some tracks and movies the lower-back ground-environmental sounds, that needed treble to come up, are subdued. It is bothering me. Is it my unit (maybe defective) or is it the normal sound character of x6 ?

 

EDM, Hip-hop tracks are way better than my on-board audio (Realtek alc1150 gigabyte k3 z170) . The sound is more like melow, lush, vinly-like, warm, thick and not harsh, more bassy also. The brightnes, edgy sound of my alc 1150 is completely gone. I mean I like it, but the texture of sound, the details are gone. So, what I'm hearing is right ? or my unit is defective.

 

It is so strange, for example; a man talking=loud, thick, bassy ---- a gun blasting=nothing excessive, quieter than a mans speech. Channels may be defective ? It's kind of wrong. some frequencies sound way louder than others. In fact low ends and lower mids are way dominant than upper mids and trebles.

 

By the way the diffrences are day and night. I'm not talking about small characteristics. My other amp/dacs weren't that diffrent than each other including my on-board audio. (e10k, k3, smsl) . I'm confused.

 

What are your experiences in this aspect ?

 
 
X6's amplifier is very weak. It's only good for some 16ohm IEMs. At such a price, basically you pay only for DAC. It's a very good DAC at this price. So I recommand to RCA to an individual amplifier and you'll see the difference immediately.

 

[freshmind]

   
 
X6's amplifier is very weak. It's only good for some 16ohm IEMs. At such a price, basically you pay only for DAC. It's a very good DAC at this price. So I recommand to RCA to an individual amplifier and you'll see the difference immediately.

 
It could be. But I think it is DAC's characteristic. I realized that because I used the RCA dac out of X6 for my 2.1 speaker system and excatly same thing happened. The inner amp do not interfere with sound. (speakers have its own apm) 
 
And my sound was boomy, warm, much more bassy, the details are subdued kinda. But it sounds less hars and more relax to listen. 
 
My speakers are already bassy and with X6, the bass is overpowered. I think, what I fear will be a problem in future for my hd6xx(650) . It also has a lean and realaxed sound with sub bass. 
 
With this dac (even if I use an another amp to feed it or to color the sound) the details, crisp and bright sound will be subdued. 
 
And same effect on soundstage (as it effected my headphone) my speakers soundstage narrowed down, closed. Like my room is smaller than before, or my headphones turned into a closed back headphone.
 
As you can see, even the only DAC part of X6 has this weird sound signature. Amp part could be poor or weak but I think its not the decisive factor to sound signature. (my headphones also does not need a real amplifiaction, they are 32 ohm dynamic headphones--ath ad-900x) 

 

[yangian]

   
It could be. But I think it is DAC's characteristic. I realized that because I used the RCA dac out of X6 for my 2.1 speaker system and excatly same thing happened. The inner amp do not interfere with sound. (speakers have its own apm) 
 
And my sound was boomy, warm, much more bassy, the details are subdued kinda. But it sounds less hars and more relax to listen. 
 
My speakers are already bassy and with X6, the bass is overpowered. I think, what I fear will be a problem in future for my hd6xx(650) . It also has a lean and realaxed sound with sub bass. 
 
With this dac (even if I use an another amp to feed it or to color the sound) the details, crisp and bright sound will be subdued. 
 
And same effect on soundstage (as it effected my headphone) my speakers soundstage narrowed down, closed. Like my room is smaller than before, or my headphones turned into a closed back headphone.
 
As you can see, even the only DAC part of X6 has this weird sound signature. Amp part could be poor or weak but I think its not the decisive factor to sound signature. (my headphones also does not need a real amplifiaction, they are 32 ohm dynamic headphones--ath ad-900x) 

 
 
I agree its soundstage is not good. But not bad at this price. Its soundstage is smaller than my Explorer, but not very obvious. And that's right its sound signature is tuby. But you can use a good amplifier to amplify the soundstage. Anyway, It's not a giant killer. But it's cost effective more or less.
BTW, Now I use it with a desktop amplifier to drive my IE800, I'm very satisfied. I was thinking to sell it, but I found they can serve my IE800, I kept it.

 

[freshmind]

Tanks so much for your answers guys. 
 
So how about changing the op amp ? For example AD797 op amp ... I read from reviews and compressions that it is more transparent and bright, lively sounding op amp. 
 
I wonder if it can fit/work with the board of X6 ? Is there a necessary thing to make it work? 

 

[Euljiro]

Hi everyone, so I finally got around to try out a much better quality power supply. I tried the 12v 2.5a one, compared to the cheaply built one that came with the X6 but at 12v 1.0a, I hear absolutely no difference. Getting the same volume also sound quality. Don't know if it's just me not hearing well or yeah. The person suggested might have a defective power supply or the plug adaptor. Anyone else tried and hear improvements?

 

[freshmind]

  Hi everyone, so I finally got around to try out a much better quality power supply. I tried the 12v 2.5a one, compared to the cheaply built one that came with the X6 but at 12v 1.0a, I hear absolutely no difference. Getting the same volume also sound quality. Don't know if it's just me not hearing well or yeah. The person suggested might have a defective power supply or the plug adaptor. Anyone else tried and hear improvements?

Hi, yes I tried it with 12v 1.5A and 12v 2.5A ... the results were same as before. Nothing changed. Also, changing the 6.3mm connector did not affect the sound. 
 
Yeah he might have a defective unit or power supply.