[mikemar42]

Is it bad to play this amp for an extended period of time at 80-90% on the volume knob ? When I listen with my grado's I never go past 12 o'clock, but with my DT770's on some music I find myself pumping it up to 4 or even 5 o'clock on my volume knob. Anyone else do this ?

This is using my computer with the volume at max, or an ipod with max volume.

 

[breakfastchef]

Short answer is no, there is not a problem running the MKII at 80%+ volume for periods of 8 hours or less at one time. You are just noticing the impedance differences between the impedance of your headphones. The lower impedance phones require less range of the volume knob while the higher impedance phones are using more power, hence the 80%+ use of your volume knob.

 

[FluidGenXY]

Hi not meaning to hijack this thread but can the little dot mk 2 be used with hifi speakers? such as Sony SS-CEX100 ? or are they just for head phones.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Hi not meaning to hijack this thread but can the little dot mk 2 be used with hifi speakers? such as Sony SS-CEX100 ? or are they just for head phones.

Only for headphones. If you have a speaker power amp, ie, just the amp circuit without a preamp stage, the MkII has a preamp output that can feed that, and you use the MkII to control system volume, while that power amp drives the speakers.

 

[FluidGenXY]

Ok thank you for clarifying. So do I disks about with the volumes? What would be the best settings for the source volume, preamp volume and and speaker volume? Would it be 20:50:20?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Ok thank you for clarifying. So do I disks about with the volumes? What would be the best settings for the source volume, preamp volume and and speaker volume? Would it be 20:50:20?

Source if it has a normal line out at 100% should be at 100%; problem is if this happens to be a computer they can either have voltage output higher than 2volts with a lot of noise or around 2v but still have some noise. This is why you need to use a DAC to output a fixed 2v signal to the HPamp/preamp.

As for preamp volume, since the MkII will be your main volume control, there is no way for someone else to tell you what to set that at other than "avoid neighbors' complaints" and "don't tear your eardrums."

Speaker volume only matters if it's a powered speaker, ie, it has an amp built it, and it's more of gain if they are pro monitors. A general way to set this up is set the digital source to 100% (again, assuming it outputs 2volts, which is what you get if you had a PC hooked up to a DAC like a Schiit Modi2), set the MkII to 1:00, then slowly turn up the dial on the speakers (or on one speaker, if you're using pro monitors with each cabinet that has its own amplifier), then pull back after you get noise and distortion (then repeat for the other speaker, if you're using a pro monitor).