[Nike T]

Hey, as the title says yea funky noises. so I checked the opamp, the tubes, and the IC and they're all fine, they're not the problem, unless I really don't understand amps at all. So when I turn on the amp, it's a Little Dot I+, there's the normal noises, but then there's a really loud buzzing noise that persists after the noises. Occurs at 0 volume through 100. With just the amp on, no DAC, which is my Gamma1, there's no sound. With the DAC, there's the noise. Is it the DAC or the amp? It's a little annoying. Thanks guys.

O yea and when I play music, and stuff actually goes through the DAC to the amp, at 0 volume there is a high pitched humming, idk what it is, but it's audible through low volume music... These all randomly happened today, so idk what happened.

Soo... I posted this up after looking through some possibilities. Should have looked harder. Turns out my comp sucks and transmits noise to my DAC through the USB. I tried it with a different computer and it worked perfectly fine.

 

[Nike T]

nvm... it's the DAC, I plugged the RCA cables into a different source and lo and behold, completely black. now I gotta find out why. Is it possible that it's because of the USB cable, or is the only thing that would matter the actual DAC itself?

 

[nkk]

It could be the cable, even though USB spec is to use a balanced signal to transmit data, IIRC. I would start with switching cables, then computers, then you can say with certainty whether it is the DAC or not.

-Nkk

 

[Nike T]

Thanks for the input, but I have totally isolated the problem. I'm using a laptop right now, it's kinda old, maybe like 4 or 5 years old. Anyway, it's the power cord for the comp, when the cord is unplugged it's quiet, when it's plugged in it's noisy.

Now my question is, would this happen on a desktop? We have an old desktop from like 8 years ago that I could just use for music. Also, would newer laptops have this problem also?

 

[LingLing1337]

I think that the nicer PSU in a desktop would help to quiet things down.

I have a computer set up as you mentioned, basically just a music server. I have TinyXP installed, no other programs but Foobar2000 and ASIO4All and some 200 gigs of music... it's blazing fast and sounds great. I can't imagine your old computer would have any problems running this type of setup. If you were even more adventurous, you could look into Xubuntu or other similar lite flavor of Linux, which would use practically no resources.

 

[Nike T]

yes I was thinking of using Ubuntu, which I use for my laptop at the moment, but I think I'll stick with Windows. It has foobar2000 and EAC, so might as well use it.