[Goatsandmonkeys]

I am most curious how the dirac sounds with some of those tracks, mostly from the 60's where the left and right channel had completely different instruments. there are a lot of tracks I find difficult listening to on headphones. I am hoping this feature will make them seem more natural.

 

[Packdemon]

I am most curious how the dirac sounds with some of those tracks, mostly from the 60's where the left and right channel had completely different instruments. there are a lot of tracks I find difficult listening to on headphones. I am hoping this feature will make them seem more natural.

Hmm, I feel like it's hit or miss with most songs. I never heard of Dirac until I saw it labeled on my Monolith yesterday, so I have no clue what it's advertised to do. It's certainly different, and I have a few posts I made about it here.

 

[Flak2]

Hmm, I feel like it's hit or miss with most songs. I never heard of Dirac until I saw it labeled on my Monolith yesterday, so I have no clue what it's advertised to do. It's certainly different, and I have a few posts I made about it here.

Here the concept behind it:
https://www.dirac.com/dirac-blog/how-to-make-headphones-stereo-compatible

 

[antdroid]

Hows the UI? Complicated or easy? Have you tried parametric EQ yet? It sounded like you had only played with the shelf EQ function.

Mine is out for delivery, but I need spoilers.

 

[Packdemon]

Hows the UI? Complicated or easy? Have you tried parametric EQ yet? It sounded like you had only played with the shelf EQ function.

Mine is out for delivery, but I need spoilers.

UI is pretty simple, it takes a few minutes to get used to though. Menu button left of scroll wheel doubles up as the back button, and when held serves as the power on/off button as well. Enter button to the right of the scroll wheel sometimes doubles up as a scroll button, and when held takes you to the various input settings (which is always set the RCA Line by default when power cycling). And last, but not least, the scroll wheel is a, well scroll wheel. Ya, I've only used the shelf EQ so far. Scrolling through the PEQs it seems you get 5 presets (PEQ 1-5) that you can set and enable. Below 1 kHz you can adjust the preset frequency by increments of 10 Hz, and above 1 kHz by increments of 100 Hz. Forgive me for not knowing this, but there is also a Q value that you can change by increments of 0.1 and it is preset to 1.0. If you go all the way to the settings you also have a quick option for disabling the EQ entirely, so you don't have to manually disable each and every single one.

 

[Packdemon]

I am most curious how the dirac sounds with some of those tracks, mostly from the 60's where the left and right channel had completely different instruments. there are a lot of tracks I find difficult listening to on headphones. I am hoping this feature will make them seem more natural.

Here the concept behind it:
https://www.dirac.com/dirac-blog/how-to-make-headphones-stereo-compatible

I see, so it's supposed to be a cross-feed between the channels, but theirs would be a "pure cross-feed" as they put it. I certainly wouldn't use this while playing a video game with built-in in-game directonality, but either way I think you're right about this working well for your 60's music. I know how unnatural and fatiguing it can be hearing an instrument (mastered to be) only in one ear.

If something was mastered properly, or mastered for headphones rather, then I would say Dirac is unnecessary.

With Dirac off, everything is much more full, cinematic, and emersive. With Dirac on it's more detailed, live (musically), and intimate.

 

[Baten]

UI is pretty simple, it takes a few minutes to get used to though. Menu button left of scroll wheel doubles up as the back button, and when held serves as the power on/off button as well. Enter button to the right of the scroll wheel sometimes doubles up as a scroll button, and when held takes you to the various input settings (which is always set the RCA Line by default when power cycling). And last, but not least, the scroll wheel is a, well scroll wheel. Ya, I've only used the shelf EQ so far. Scrolling through the PEQs it seems you get 5 presets (PEQ 1-5) that you can set and enable. Below 1 kHz you can adjust the preset frequency by increments of 10 Hz, and above 1 kHz by increments of 100 Hz. Forgive me for not knowing this, but there is also a Q value that you can change by increments of 0.1 and it is preset to 1.0. If you go all the way to the settings you also have a quick option for disabling the EQ entirely, so you don't have to manually disable each and every single one.

Sounds like a 5-band EQ

 

[Packdemon]

Sounds like a 5-band EQ

Maybe, but there's I think there's nothing to stop you from using the 2-bands from the shelf EQ along with the 5 PEQ, so you can get 7 in total.

 

[MrPretty]

So the DAC just arrived but I cannot get windows to find the correct driver, it just installs a generic USB Audio driver. It shows up in the device manager but it has a little yellow exclamation next to it and its currently not showing up as a playback device.

Does anyone know which driver needs to be installed?

 

[Packdemon]

Hows the UI? Complicated or easy? Have you tried parametric EQ yet? It sounded like you had only played with the shelf EQ function.

Mine is out for delivery, but I need spoilers.

Here's a bit of me scrolling through the UI:

 

[FrostyP]

Hmm it's sounding like I should wait for a revision like how the M1060 was revised. I do plan on buying one of these sometime in the future for sure though.

 

[antdroid]

I got mine in. Sounds pretty good. Everything works fine. Will need to report back later

 

[gto88]

Asked Monoprice tech about driver, they said there is no driver and sent me the manual.
The manual said nothing about 32bit nor 768khz, and dsd is limited to dsd128.
This unit is limited to 24bit according to manual.
If you use PCM all the way, it can do 24bit/352.8Khz on Windows 10.
It is a pity that this unit doesn't offer driver to go up to DSD512 and 32bit/768KHz.
It is probably a cost consideration.
As for its Amplifier, THX AAA module, after listening it, even it is a short period, I can say that
it is pretty good and on par with iFi Pro iCan (for me of course).
It is so good that they only design XLR input for this Amp, and no XLR output for its DAC.
For the price, the performance is really worth it IMO.
I am thinking to return it because of these:
- no 32bit support (even iFi nano iDSD has it)
- no XLR output for dac
- no driver support (all my dac have driver to utilize full strength of its dac.)
- no DSD512 (not that I have source but it has hardware, why miss it?)
- failed to take DTS playback while my Pro-ject S2D can (driver related??)
I intended to have this to replace my big block LKS dac, but unfortunately
this dac misses something that I need.

This is my personal view only.
I am sure many of you will like this product.

 

[Packdemon]

Asked Monoprice tech about driver, they said there is no driver and sent me the manual.
The manual said nothing about 32bit nor 768khz, and dsd is limited to dsd128.
This unit is limited to 24bit according to manual.
If you use PCM all the way, it can do 24bit/352.8Khz on Windows 10.
It is a pity that this unit doesn't offer driver to go up to DSD512 and 32bit/768KHz.
It is probably a cost consideration.
As for its Amplifier, THX AAA module, after listening it, even it is a short period, I can say that
it is pretty good and on par with iFi Pro iCan (for me of course).
It is so good that they only design XLR input for this Amp, and no XLR output for its DAC.
For the price, the performance is really worth it IMO.
I am thinking to return it because of these:
- no 32bit support (even iFi nano iDSD has it)
- no XLR output for dac
- no driver support (all my dac have driver to utilize full strength of its dac.)
- no DSD512 (not that I have source but it has hardware, why miss it?)
- failed to take DTS playback while my Pro-ject S2D can (driver related??)
I intended to have this to replace my big block LKS dac, but unfortunately
this dac misses something that I need.

This is my personal view only.
I am sure many of you will like this product.

It's always possible that they might release a driver in the future, but I'm glad that it works out of the box with windows and andriod.

 

[antdroid]

There are some things I like about the DX7 more. The remote makes things easy to switch settings quickly. On the MonoTHX, everything is run through the Menu and Enter button, so just switching sources is annoying. I have it hooked up to my computer as well as using an old DVD player as a digital transport via Coax to the DAC.

Another annoying thing is that you can the Line Out is not active all the time. It requires switching from HP out to Line Out, but the option is buried a few steps in from the main menu.