[tansand]

Reggy if this is the same dac..

Balanced XLR Output Level: 4.4V (+/- 10%) V RMS (1KHz)
Unbalanced RCA Output Level: 2.2V (+/- 10%) V RMS (1KHz)

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/den...adder-dac-close-up-view.833690/#post-13221921

 

[castleofargh]

https://www.chord.co.uk/xlr-vs-rca/
"There is an important point here though. XLR connections often carry a higher voltage signal then RCA connections, up to 4 volts against typically the 2 volts on an RCA connection. So if for instance you were connecting a CD player with XLR connection to an amplifier with RCA connection, you may well find that the extra signal strength will overdrive the RCA input on the amplifier. The problem being that this will give you very little control over the volume and can lead to harsh and fatiguing sound." [They maybe talking about active preamps there]
I'm not sure if that will be a problem with a preamp with an RCA connection but it is something to consider. My best guess is the reason the DAC has RCA outputs is to do with the sales factor and compatibility, which one? Probably both. The RCA outputs on the DAC could in fact be different sounding in nature than the XLR. I understand the practical application when XLR is preferred in noisy environments and long cable runs but that isn't the case with mine.

So it's hard to say why he noticed some deficiencies or differences in resolutions there, of course out of anyone he is the only one I've encountered to describe that something may be up with the Ares. It's hard to tell.

The DAC outputs a fairly high ouput voltage of 4V RMS so I would have to check the compatibility of RCA preamps to see if that might overdrive it and perhaps investigate further of the whole RCA vs XLR.

your speakers can be set to -6dB for the input sensitivity, so already you're down from 4.4v to 2,2V with such setting even balanced. that gets you closer to the max for the speaker's internal amp and any further attenuation (digital or with a volume controller) will be able to get you out of clipping risks. I believe the issue is mostly about getting you to a comfortable listening level, and not much else. as with a lot of this hobby, the line between overthinking and high end concerns can be very thin.

about a volume knob changing the levels too fast and making it annoying to use, that's a problem any designer has to think about. if you make a wide attenuation range, it still has to fit within one turn of the knob and your listening preference will of course be hard to get just right. we all would rather have something already in the area of our listening preference and with a much smoother/smaller range of attenuation so we can make big moves with smaller impacts. but that means getting the initial gain just right, which is not really your case here. you're already struggling to get below the loudest output the speakers can handle. that's going to be loud(I'm captain obvious ). and a default volume controller will tend be the kind with a pretty wide range of attenuation because the guy making it doesn't know what we're going to use it with so he'll ensure a wide range just in case. you have to play with the cards you're given. TBH I personally wouldn't have bought this DAC and those speakers to go together in the first place, so I see your situation as solving a problem instead of thinking about what's the very best thing there is for elite audio.
I have active speakers and I feed them with a cheap Scarlet 2I2. really nothing to be impressed with, but the gain was fine from the start, and the output has a volume knob, the result is simply practical. if I was in your situation I would use a passive volume controller if I liked both gears a lot, or I'd get rid of one of the gears and get something more practical. as you're aware you have more options, like adding an amplifier in the chain, but I personally wouldn't bother with that in this specific context. an amp to reduce the volume is something I did myself for IEMs once, and if I had to do that again, I'd just get an inline volume thingy or get rid of the annoying IEMs.

bfreedma: I do think one cable is audibly superior with one amp, and the other cable is audibly superior with the other amp, vise versa is not good. This conflicts with bigshot big tirade(s), which is why I mention it. You may have similar experiences yourself.

clearly what @bfreedma is rejecting is the idea that your sighted subjective impression can constitute objective evidence. his position is very much that of the all sub section.
I don't believe anybody with some electrical understanding would reject the possibility of getting audible change from a cable. we all get that it's possible under some circumstances. but just the same we also get that most people will "hear" a difference in sighted test if 2 cables look different while being identical aside from the eye candy. so to accept a statement as a fact about sound, we require more than someone feeling a change in a sighted test. it really doesn't go much beyond that. when I post stuff showing how my IEM FR changed from affecting the impedance, so far I've never seen those guys contest my statement. they're not troubled by cables doing something, they're troubled by sighted experiences used as evidence. at least that's the impression I have of them ^_^.

 

[tansand]

If you get a passive you're going to want to use the rca's, it's going to be hard to get rid of that 4.4v with a shunt volume control. The series resistor size will have to go up in order to reduce the volume, but this will increase the output impedance and more severely alter the rate of change of volume as you rotate the control. You want some flexibilty in the value of the series resistor to make a good compromise in the impedances, you don't want to spend that flexibility on reducing the excessive voltage. I assume the same will be true of the Pi attenuator with xlr in, but I'm not entirely sure.

edit: I see from castleofargh's post that there is a -6db switch on the speaker, I still think the dac's rca out connection is the way to go, the last thing you want is the volume control down at the bottom of it's travel.

 

[Reggy]

your speakers can be set to -6dB for the input sensitivity, so already you're down from 4.4v to 2,2V with such setting even balanced. that gets you closer to the max for the speaker's internal amp and any further attenuation (digital or with a volume controller) will be able to get you out of clipping risks. I believe the issue is mostly about getting you to a comfortable listening level, and not much else. as with a lot of this hobby, the line between overthinking and high end concerns can be very thin.

about a volume knob changing the levels too fast and making it annoying to use, that's a problem any designer has to think about. if you make a wide attenuation range, it still has to fit within one turn of the knob and your listening preference will of course be hard to get just right. we all would rather have something already in the area of our listening preference and with a much smoother/smaller range of attenuation so we can make big moves with smaller impacts. but that means getting the initial gain just right, which is not really your case here. you're already struggling to get below the loudest output the speakers can handle. that's going to be loud(I'm captain obvious ). and a default volume controller will tend be the kind with a pretty wide range of attenuation because the guy making it doesn't know what we're going to use it with so he'll ensure a wide range just in case. you have to play with the cards you're given. TBH I personally wouldn't have bought this DAC and those speakers to go together in the first place, so I see your situation as solving a problem instead of thinking about what's the very best thing there is for elite audio.
I have active speakers and I feed them with a cheap Scarlet 2I2. really nothing to be impressed with, but the gain was fine from the start, and the output has a volume knob, the result is simply practical. if I was in your situation I would use a passive volume controller if I liked both gears a lot, or I'd get rid of one of the gears and get something more practical. as you're aware you have more options, like adding an amplifier in the chain, but I personally wouldn't bother with that in this specific context. an amp to reduce the volume is something I did myself for IEMs once, and if I had to do that again, I'd just get an inline volume thingy or get rid of the annoying IEMs.

If you get a passive you're going to want to use the rca's, it's going to be hard to get rid of that 4.4v with a shunt volume control. The series resistor size will have to go up in order to reduce the volume, but this will increase the output impedance and more severely alter the rate of change of volume as you rotate the control. You want some flexibilty in the value of the series resistor to make a good compromise in the impedances, you don't want to spend that flexibility on reducing the excessive voltage. I assume the same will be true of the Pi attenuator with xlr in, but I'm not entirely sure.

edit: I see from castleofargh's post that there is a -6db switch on the speaker, I still think the dac's rca out connection is the way to go, the last thing you want is the volume control down at the bottom of it's travel.

Ok thanks, guys much appreciated, I have a better idea of which I could expect. I will let you know how my setup works with this passive: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Full-Balance-JemmyAudio-Volume-1-Passive-Front-Volume-Controller/272480134142?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

From there I will at least know from that design whether the 4.4 v line voltage will be handled by a 10K pot. I'll set the sensitivity down to +6 dBu before i hook it up, (right now the input sensitivity control is set full clockwise which works well for the Focusrite). Who know I may be fully satisfied with this setup for now, if it turns out the volume range is too variable than at least I know another expensive fully balanced passive will not work. I'll then do my research on RCA passives or even consider another DAC.

I understand at this point the problem does seem like more of a problem rather than aiming for the best sounding setup, but the premise was simply go for the best bang for buck speakers used for close range (the Genelec's I got on sale) then go for the "Best" DAC that everyone raves about on the internet - the Ares, at least for a period of time. At least that was my approach. Now I am relying on other people's general consensus of the sound, but for $800 I didn't think it would be a dangerous bet. I haven't been in this "hobby" long enough (nor will I take up that hobby) to know if the DAC was a hype fad that fades away like other hot stuff that comes to the market. But R2R Ladder DAC's are hot right now in their sound so I will join that train for a low cost as naive and stupid that sounds.

The fact that the Denafrips products are claimed to have a particular house sound (yet very detailed and resolving) may very well compliment my speakers with are already rather forward in the mids.

Who knows I may end up hearing a huge difference, but rather in a funny, well "this is different" way to understand all the fuss of the hype I will just have to see.

 

[tansand]

Don't feel bad, Reggy, you're solving problems, but I don't think they're major ones. After all you have rca outs that put out 2.2v which is totally normal. Also, because the voltage out is half, maybe the output impedance is half too. If it were me however, I'd send those XLR cables you bought back, and plan on using rca's from the dac to the volume control.

One thing that occurs to me that might cause some confusion for you later is that the ebay volume control you got might just be wired internally like the output on the denafrips to the rca's, that is it might be 2.2v in there instead of 4.4v, and then to the pot, and out to the xlrs. I'm not familiar enough with balanced wiring to know, but IF it is like that it will lack the four fixed series resistors inside, as far as I know, and have none, or two. So you'll want to have a look inside and determine that before you go buying more gear based on experience with that unit, and assumptions about what voltages you have..If that's the case, it is not a shunt or Pi attenuator, but a normal volume control. The nice thing about that though is that everything you bought already, xlr cords, volume control, should work decent together as far as level. You might just stop there, and be done . A shunt volume control with unbalanced rca's would eat Another 2db to 6db depending, from the series resistors, but a Pi attenuator with the xlr outputs on the denifrips would get you the 4.4v back again (+6db) remember, and THEN eat the 2db to 6db.

Here is a thing about balanced interconnection, the pic at the bottom with all the wires will help you understand what kind of wirings will result in -6db (those with 'B'), basically you're looking at #4..I think.

http://www.rane.com/note110.html

 

[Reggy]

Well what do you know, the whole time it's been staring me in the face: https://www.vinshineaudio.com/product-page/denafrips-ares-r2r-dac

Analog Output

• RCA at 2.2Vrms, 625 Ω
• XLR at 4.4Vrms, 1250 Ω

so correct you are tansand, impedance is half!

What I'll do when the passive arrives is take it apart and maybe upload pictures to figure out what type of attenuation system the engineer used. And then from that, test Ares DAC >> RCA >> Volume POT >> XLR >> Speakers for a given input sensitivity. I'll also test out all-out XLR as well.

The good news with the passive I'm getting is it has a switching network to select RCA or XLR for both input and output, so that will be certainly handy.

I don't have any golden ear quality RCA's but I'm sure any average any pair around the house work for the unbalanced connection from the DAC to the volume pot, at least for volume level testing. If I do hear a difference between XLR and RCA or respectively 1250Ω and 625Ω, I'll be ecstatic, let alone an improvement from the 2i4i.

 

[Reggy]

Oh and the "Fully Balanced" preamp has 10kOhm impedance ALPS 09 balanced potentiometer, NEUTRIK XLR seat, Pro-Singnal RCA seat if that helps.

 

[castleofargh]

you're going to hear a difference in volume level at least ^_^. so that's going to make proper listening comparisons difficult.

 

[drtechno]

There will be more noise floor as you go below 1K. Btw, I've used those monitors directly out from +24 DACs. The monitors have a line amp internally, so even if you were getting a -10 signal out of it, it will sill work.