Hello everyone!
I recently bought a Gustard R26 and I noticed two things: the first one is the humming noise coming from the toroidal transformer that lots of R26 owners have noticed (and that hopefully will go away when an Audiolab DC Filter will arrive to me the next week); the second one, and way more bothersome to me, is that it has a slight but noticeable coil whine coming from the inside of the DAC when I set its sample rate to multiples of 48 KHz. When I set the sample rate to multiples of 44100 Hz, no coil whine is present. I recorded some samples with my microphone near the DAC, and by analyzing them with Spek I got confirmation that a whine at 6 KHz and 12 KHz is indeed present when the sample rate of the DAC is set to multiples of 48000 Hz.
So far I verified through Spek and my ears that:
- At 48000 Hz and 384000 Hz the DAC whines at 12 KHz, very subtle and almost not noticeable unless my ears are very close to the DAC;
- At 96000 Hz the DAC whines at 6 KHz and a little bit at 12 KHz, more noticeable than 48 KHz and 384 KHz but still subtle;
- At 192000 Hz the DAC whines very loud at 6 KHz and slightly at 12 KHz. In this case the whine is very noticeable and I can hear it even at a normal PC usage distance;
- At 44100 Hz and multiples, no coil whine is present at all.
I want to ask you all if this behaviour is normal or not, and also want to ask other R26 owners if their unit does the same. I am undecided if I should ask for a replacement, hoping that it will not have this issue, or simply send back the unit, get a refund and buy another DAC, but before making a decision I would like to know your opinion about this matter.