[FooFighter]

I ordered Spring 3 KTE DAC.

Me too today

 

[BlakeT]

Previously my Spring 3 was connected to a Windows laptop. Now it is connected to an older MacBook Pro.

When playing songs on the internet (YouTube, bandcamp, etc.), from the MacBook Pro, for some reason the sound will suddenly stop. The time tracker on the song will keep moving forward, but there is no sound. So it seems the Spring is losing its lock on the signal?

Rebooting the Spring solves the problem each time and I get sound, but this happens once or twice each day. I never had these issues when the Spring was connected to my Windows laptop.

Anyone experience anything similar or have any ideas?

TIA

 

[FooFighter]

Previously my Spring 3 was connected to a Windows laptop. Now it is connected to an older MacBook Pro.

When playing songs on the internet (YouTube, bandcamp, etc.), from the MacBook Pro, for some reason the sound will suddenly stop. The time tracker on the song will keep moving forward, but there is no sound. So it seems the Spring is losing its lock on the signal?

Rebooting the Spring solves the problem each time and I get sound, but this happens once or twice each day. I never had these issues when the Spring was connected to my Windows laptop.

Anyone experience anything similar or have any ideas?

TIA

Will tell you once I get it but am getting concerned as I am planning using the same source.
How are music sources?
Audirvana, Roon (should get some exclusive access?), Tidal native app, Amazon Music, Apple Music?

 

[mfgillia]

Previously my Spring 3 was connected to a Windows laptop. Now it is connected to an older MacBook Pro.

When playing songs on the internet (YouTube, bandcamp, etc.), from the MacBook Pro, for some reason the sound will suddenly stop. The time tracker on the song will keep moving forward, but there is no sound. So it seems the Spring is losing its lock on the signal?

Rebooting the Spring solves the problem each time and I get sound, but this happens once or twice each day. I never had these issues when the Spring was connected to my Windows laptop.

Anyone experience anything similar or have any ideas?

TIA

Did you try updating the firmware? You should also check back with the distributor who sold it to you for additional support.

 

[dudeX]

Previously my Spring 3 was connected to a Windows laptop. Now it is connected to an older MacBook Pro.

When playing songs on the internet (YouTube, bandcamp, etc.), from the MacBook Pro, for some reason the sound will suddenly stop. The time tracker on the song will keep moving forward, but there is no sound. So it seems the Spring is losing its lock on the signal?

Rebooting the Spring solves the problem each time and I get sound, but this happens once or twice each day. I never had these issues when the Spring was connected to my Windows laptop.

Anyone experience anything similar or have any ideas?

TIA

At the moment I have a Topping D90SE connected to my MacBookPro and every now and then (like every two weeks or so), music or videos refuse to play. I don't reboot my DAC but I unplug the USB cable. Another thing I do is open the Activity Monitor and "force quit" the process "coreaudiod" which is the main program to playback sound from any application. That usually does it. Occasionally that doesn't work so I just reboot the MacBookPro.

 

[FooFighter]

MacOS is kind of driverless for DACs (using a generic interface for all DACs in reality in contrast to Windows ASIO drivers which on the other hand also introduces limits for e.g DSD playback over DOP) and I can only speculate about reasons such as an exclusive lock of one application (like the mentioned music apps) which is preventing playback of other sources respectively relocking the signal path.
I am personally not planning using other apps than music streaming apps.
For videos I am exclusively using my Airpods Max.
In general I always have the audio mixer and the sound app open so I can see which device is used as primary device - that's also worth to be checked in such cases

 

[mudguardiain]

Is it your Spring 3 KTE with the preamp module installed?

BTW I´ll love to hear from someone who heard S3 KTE with and without preamp module and elaborate about the sonic differences (if any) between both versions. I´d like to know if the preamp module is almost 100% transparent as the manufacturer claims (frankly, I doubt it) and its impact on the final sound compared with a S3 KTE without preamp.

Mine is fixed output, no preamp, hooked up to my Burson Soloist. The DAC is far from burned in, I found the sound got a little brighter over the weekend, not harsh, just a bit less warm sounding. My experience of burn in from past items is that burn in is not always linear & can appear to almost get worse for short periods. Will have to see how the Spring changes over the coming days/weeks. My initial impressions are it will be compatible with what I am looking for in a DAC. My inspiration for improving my audio gear is to try & create the emotional experience I get from seeing a live gig as best I can through my headphones, hopefully the Spring will take me a step closer. I did not feel the TT2 managed this as well as I had hoped, especially given the price tag. Others will probably have a completely different take on it, this is the beauty of this hobby.

 

[MatW]

Can someone please confirm that the height of the Spring is 55 mm including the feet? Getting ready for an incoming unit...

Edit: got the answer. It's without the feet. 66 mm including feet, in case anyone would like to know..

 

[mudguardiain]

Mine is fixed output, no preamp, hooked up to my Burson Soloist. The DAC is far from burned in, I found the sound got a little brighter over the weekend, not harsh, just a bit less warm sounding. My experience of burn in from past items is that burn in is not always linear & can appear to almost get worse for short periods. Will have to see how the Spring changes over the coming days/weeks. My initial impressions are it will be compatible with what I am looking for in a DAC. My inspiration for improving my audio gear is to try & create the emotional experience I get from seeing a live gig as best I can through my headphones, hopefully the Spring will take me a step closer. I did not feel the TT2 managed this as well as I had hoped, especially given the price tag. Others will probably have a completely different take on it, this is the beauty of this hobby.

As anyone noticed any bass bloat during burn in. I am at approx 160 hours powered up with around 25 hours of music played so far. I am finding an increase any bass quantity but a loss of definition & texture. The bass is bleeding Ito the midrange quite badly. I assume, hope the bass will tighten up with further burn in but as present everything feels very dominated by too much bottom end which is masking finer details.

 

[koso]

As anyone noticed any bass bloat during burn in. I am at approx 160 hours powered up with around 25 hours of music played so far. I am finding an increase any bass quantity but a loss of definition & texture. The bass is bleeding Ito the midrange quite badly. I assume, hope the bass will tighten up with further burn in but as present everything feels very dominated by too much bottom end which is masking finer details.

Don't worry. According to my experience, at 160 hours of proper burn in, you are nowhere near to stabilize sound. At about 300-400 hours I noticed that everything was quite stable without any further big ups and downs. And after another 200-300 hours there will be last few slight improvements audible. Patience is the key word here.

And important note. You HAVE TO PLAY MUSIC to count hours of proper “burn in”. It is not enough just to let unit ON. However, it is not needed to have amp on, just source and dac. DAC have to do some “work”, to do some conversion, otherwise burn in process will by extremely long (and this device has very long burn in period even with proper burn in).

 

[KenMan85]

Don't worry. According to my experience, at 160 hours of proper burn in, you are nowhere near to stabilize sound. At about 300-400 hours I noticed that everything was quite stable without any further big ups and downs. And after another 200-300 hours there will be last few slight improvements audible. Patience is the key word here.

And important note. You HAVE TO PLAY MUSIC to count hours of proper “burn in”. It is not enough just to let unit ON. However, it is not needed to have amp on, just source and dac. DAC have to do some “work”, to do some conversion, otherwise burn in process will by extremely long (and this device has very long burn in period even with proper burn in).

True, I haven't turned mine of for much time since I got it.

 

[FooFighter]

Sorry for the noob question but I was reading that people use NOS mode on the Spring and then perform upsampling externally on apps like HQPlayer.
What's the difference between NOS + upsampling and OS + upsampling if there's no built-in OS anyway?

 

[mudguardiain]

Don't worry. According to my experience, at 160 hours of proper burn in, you are nowhere near to stabilize sound. At about 300-400 hours I noticed that everything was quite stable without any further big ups and downs. And after another 200-300 hours there will be last few slight improvements audible. Patience is the key word here.

And important note. You HAVE TO PLAY MUSIC to count hours of proper “burn in”. It is not enough just to let unit ON. However, it is not needed to have amp on, just source and dac. DAC have to do some “work”, to do some conversion, otherwise burn in process will by extremely long (and this device has very long burn in period even with proper burn in).

Thanks for the info, I will keep on playing, got a week or so off work now, so plenty of listening time & in between will keep the music playing. Got high hopes for this DAC, it certainly shows a lot of promise, seems to change a little each time I listen.

 

[davide256]

Anyone have thoughts on whether the optional pre section is better than an external pre-amp? I'm using a Linear Tube Audio MZ2 as pre, whenever I've tried DAC's direct to amp, transients get a bit sharper but mid range suffers loss of bloom and tone color solidity.

 

[davide256]

Sorry for the noob question but I was reading that people use NOS mode on the Spring and then perform upsampling externally on apps like HQPlayer.
What's the difference between NOS + upsampling and OS + upsampling if there's no built-in OS anyway?

You don't want to over/up-sample whats already over/up-sampled, that creates artifacts. Using NOS allows cleaner up-sampling for more powerful external up-sampling solutions like HQPlayer and PGGB.