[flyte3333]

Sometimes pressing the "-" button INCREASES the volume ....

I’ve had this happen too.

The firmware is 1.60.....

This version number sounds high? Did it come out of the box like this?

 

[KotBegemot]

I’ve had this happen too.



This version number sounds high? Did it come out of the box like this?

Yes, indeed right out of the box.... Whats your situation regarding DSD mastering activation and filters?

 

[flyte3333]

Yes, indeed right out of the box.... Whats your situation regarding DSD mastering activation and filters?

DSD remastering and filters all work fine for me. As noted earlier in this thread I have soms small pops when using Roon bit perfect playback. I can’t say if this is a DSD remastering thing - I need to test with DSD remastering off to see if those pops disappear.

No other issues for me. Sound quality is fantastic and reliability great when I feed it DSD512 with HQPlayer.

I hope your issues are resolved. iF Support is first class, so no need to worry. They will sort everything out and you’ll be very happy in the end.

 

[KotBegemot]

DSD remastering and filters all work fine for me. As noted earlier in this thread I have soms small pops when using Roon bit perfect playback. I can’t say if this is a DSD remastering thing - I need to test with DSD remastering off to see if those pops disappear.

No other issues for me. Sound quality is fantastic and reliability great when I feed it DSD512 with HQPlayer.

I hope your issues are resolved. iF Support is first class, so no need to worry. They will sort everything out and you’ll be very happy in the end.

We shall see.....

 

[SuperRex]

We feel your pain. We really do.

How to check my firmware and where can I upgrade it?

 

[iFi audio]

Folks, AMR will be demoing two machines in the Colorado Audio Society Hospitality Suite at RMAF. Room 6007.




Yup, we're giving away Fast Blow fuses for Magnepan speakers! 2.5A for Magnepan 3.6/3.7 and 4A for other Magnepan machines.

 

[Bozzunter]

Are there any news about the MQA firmware? It was repeated ad nauseam that it would be released in September...

 

[iFi audio]

Are there any news about the MQA firmware? It was repeated ad nauseam that it would be released in September...

We're on it.

 

[project86]

My review of the Pro iDSD is LIVE over at Darko.Audio - have a look when you get a moment.

Now to go read some other reviews and see if people came to the same conclusions or not. I always avoid other impressions until mine is finished, and I'm typically pretty confident in what I hear from a device... but with so many various sound tweaking options to explore, this is a bit different than the usual DAC experience.

 

[SuperRex]

Unfortunately I am having a lot of issues with this DAC. I just created an account here in hope that I can receive some support, seeing that ifi looks to be very active in this thread. Please excuse me if there is a firmware fix for these problems out there already! I looked around and couldn't find any on the ifi website but I could be looking in the wrong places. Also apologies if this has been reported in this thread already, but I could not feasibly check all pages of the thread.

First, and the more minor issue, is that often when switching to a new song, the pro idsd takes a second or two to start playing and I miss the first couple seconds of the song. I find that this only happens with high res files, almost always only 24/192. Pressing play again usually works. This could be an issue with Roon but I haven't experienced it with any of my other dacs. This is a problem I can probably live with considering it never happens when letting playback naturally move to the next track, and only when explicitly pressing play to start a new song.

The next issue is a deal breaker and I will be returning the DAC if it can't be resolved with some kind of firmware fix very soon.

When playing ANY file with lower sampling rate, I am getting very audible random popping noises. I am able to reproduce this with both 16 and 24 bit, 44.1khz and 48khz. I have not been able to reproduce the popping with files of higher sampling rate. No matter which file I play, I will get 5-10 loud pops throughout the song at seemingly random points. I have been able to reproduce this on all digital filter and DSD upsampling combinations, including with no upsampling. I've reproduced the issue with 4 different headphones and 3 different amps. Switching out the Pro iDSD with my Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ and keeping everything else the exact same (except usb2 vs usb3 cable) makes the problem go away.

Is anyone else able to reproduce this issue?

I have the exact same issue. Have you find a fix yet?

 

[flyte3333]

My review of the Pro iDSD is LIVE over at Darko.Audio - have a look when you get a moment.

Now to go read some other reviews and see if people came to the same conclusions or not. I always avoid other impressions until mine is finished, and I'm typically pretty confident in what I hear from a device... but with so many various sound tweaking options to explore, this is a bit different than the usual DAC experience.

Great review. Any chance John will listen to it personally so that he can consider where it fits on his 'Darko DAC Index'?

https://darko.audio/the-darko-dac-index/

 

[project86]

Great review. Any chance John will listen to it personally so that he can consider where it fits on his 'Darko DAC Index'?

https://darko.audio/the-darko-dac-index/

Thanks!

Darko probably won't be able to listen to it though. He's in Germany and I'm in California, so not easy to just hand it off or easily ship it. Also he would have to start from scratch on listening to a device which has already been reviewed... realistically, from what I know of his schedule, there probably isn't time for that.

I think I discussed this somewhere around here recently, so my apologies if I'm repeating myself... but my DAC index would look something like this:

Premier League
Resonessence Labs Mirus Pro Signature
Metrum Pavane
Wyred4Sound DAC2v2SE 10th Anniversary Edition
Aqua HiFi La Scala MKII

Division 1
ModWright Oppo 205
PS Audio DirectStream
Resonessence Labs Veritas
Exogal Comet Plus
BMC UltraDAC
iFi Pro iDSD

Division 2
PS Audio DirectStream Jr
Auralic Vega (original model, not the new G series which I haven't heard yet)
Denafrips Pontus
Stock Oppo 205
RME ADI-2 DAC
Mytek Brooklyn+

Division 3
Cayin iDAC-6
Denafrips Ares
Massdrop Airist R-2R DAC
Stock Oppo 105
Chord Hugo (original)

These are just my general thoughts, with no particular attention paid to the order of each division (so iFi Pro iDSD is not inferior to the rest of Division 1 just because it appears on the bottom). Also most of these were only compared to a few other models at a time, and things may change if I had most/all of these here at once for direct comparison.

 

[iFi audio]

My review of the Pro iDSD is LIVE over at Darko.Audio - have a look when you get a moment.

Yes, we've seen it, great work! thanks!

 

[doggiehowser]

*shivers* a DS Jr ranked lower than any Sabre32 DAC.

 

[project86]

*shivers* a DS Jr ranked lower than any Sabre32 DAC.

Can't tell if you are serious or not... but I'm sure you know that the DAC chip itself is just one small piece of the puzzle, and implementation is everything. There are great Sabre-based designs, terrible Sabre-based designs, and everything in between. Same for devices using chips from Texas Instruments, Wolfson, Cirrus, AKM, etc. That's akin to saying ALL amps using 6SN7 tubes will sound the same - not only are there many different 6SN7 tubes to choose from (just as there are many Sabre chips in the ESS catalog) but they can be used in wildly different circuit designs, which will obvious change the resulting sound.

Note how there's at least one Sabre-based DAC in each of my tiers, an R-2R design in 3 out of 4, an FPGA-based solution in 3 out of 4, and a few other (non-Sabre) off-the-shelf designs in 3 out of 4 tiers. Pretty good spread I'd say.