[BobJS]

I'm in.   Delivery Friday.

 

[MattTCG]

Question...
 
When using the HA-1 as pre-amp I'm getting drastic volume reduction compared to stand alone alone dacs (bifrost and NAD m51). I realize that there will be some variation BUT...not this much. Going from the HA-1 (pre-amp) to the Valhalla 2 now requires going to about 3:00 on the pot to get to a comfortable listening level, plus engaging the hi gain switch (this is compared to the bifrost and NAD which don't need the hi gain engaged and not nearly as much on the pot).
 
What am I missing here?

 

[Badas]

^
 
Do you have bypass engaged? or do you want the HA-1 to be volume control?

 

[mrscotchguy]

Well... The bifrost was always overly loud when I had it...

 

[MattTCG]

  ^
 
Do you have bypass engaged? or do you want the HA-1 to be volume control?

 
Thanks. Somehow bypass was not engaged. I had checked it a couple of times thinking that was the problem. Working at appropriate volume levels now.
 
thanks...

 

[Badas]

   
Thanks. Somehow bypass was not engaged. I had checked it a couple of times thinking that was the problem. Working at appropriate volume levels now.
 
thanks...

Cool. I do love it as a pre-amp. I was listening last night as I was doing other Home Theater work. Sounds damn good.
 
I don't care what others have said about break-in. This has changed a lot. I remember being really disappointed with the sound at first. Not now.

 

[mithrandir38]

Has anyone else had issues with the info display?  I'm using the asio driver with no extra processing in jriver media center, and all mp3's are playing back in 44.1/32.  All redbook rips seem to playback accurately at 44.1/16 and most 96/24 files play back accurately, with the exception of two dvd audio rips which are listed at 96/24, but play back in 96/16.  I don't believe this was happening with my Schiit Bifrost, but then again, It didn't have an LCD display.
 
any Info?  Thanks.

 

[BobJS]

 
Cool. I do love it as a pre-amp. I was listening last night as I was doing other Home Theater work. Sounds damn good.
 
I don't care what others have said about break-in. This has changed a lot. I remember being really disappointed with the sound at first. Not now.

 
I had never given much credence to electronics (as opposed to moving part, diaphragm; headphones) burn-in until I got the Burson Conductor.  I had the unit packed up for return when posters convinced me to burn it in.  It made quite a strikingly large, night and day difference running it continuously a couple of weeks.  I'm quite familiar with expectation bias and brain burn-in, but this was most certainly not what was going on.
 
So I'm expecting the HA-1 to be delivered Friday.  Am I hearing that I should expect burn-in improvements beyond what I'll experience out-of-the-box?

 

[Badas]

   
I had never given much credence to electronics (as opposed to moving part, diaphragm; headphones) burn-in until I got the Burson Conductor.  I had the unit packed up for return when posters convinced me to burn it in.  It made quite a strikingly large, night and day difference running it continuously a couple of weeks.  I'm quite familiar with expectation bias and brain burn-in, but this was most certainly not what was going on.
 
So I'm expecting the HA-1 to be delivered Friday.  Am I hearing that I should expect burn-in improvements beyond what I'll experience out-of-the-box?

I had a Arcam irDac before the HA-1. As soon as I installed the HA-1 and ran it using pre-amp my heart sunk. Thought it was a big mistake. All bass was gone (I run three subs so that was huge disapointment), Not much mid-bass and way to much treble. I even plugged the Arcam back in to compare. Arcam was way better.
I let it run in a week and it improved. Now I'm noticing a big change again (couple of months). Now it sounds better than the Arcam, Bass is now kicking. I touch the sub drivers and wow they are kicking. I would say dynamics have improved also. So I don't know what the story is but it is not placebo effect.
 
I had a headphone change between getting the HA-1 and now so I can't comment on the headphone side. Sounds sweeeet through my Audeze LCD-3.

 

[RonO]

  Has anyone else had issues with the info display?  I'm using the asio driver with no extra processing in jriver media center, and all mp3's are playing back in 44.1/32.  All redbook rips seem to playback accurately at 44.1/16 and most 96/24 files play back accurately, with the exception of two dvd audio rips which are listed at 96/24, but play back in 96/16.  I don't believe this was happening with my Schiit Bifrost, but then again, It didn't have an LCD display.
 
any Info?  Thanks.

I've seen some of this also, and chatted with MattTCG a little about it.  I've got a Rush HDtracks album that's 96/24, shows up as 96/16.  I think this is just the DAC detecting all bits above 16 as zero's, which seems to indicate that these files are an upsample, and there is not 24bits of data there.  Some google searches confirmed others seeing the same on DVD-A rips of the same album. 
 
I also occasionally see the DAC report 32 bit on output for lossy files, it just appears to be processing those as 32 bit in JRiver, so it's outputting a bunch of extra zero's to the DAC.  Sometimes after a few moments it switches down to 16. Like you, my previous DAC (ODAC) didn't display anything so I couldn't see this before.  I think this is fine.

 

[MattTCG]

Good info Ron. You should post more often. 

 

[mithrandir38]

I've seen some of this also, and chatted with MattTCG a little about it.  I've got a Rush HDtracks album that's 96/24, shows up as 96/16.  I think this is just the DAC detecting all bits above 16 as zero's, which seems to indicate that these files are an upsample, and there is not 24bits of data there.  Some google searches confirmed others seeing the same on DVD-A rips of the same album. 

I also occasionally see the DAC report 32 bit on output for lossy files, it just appears to be processing those as 32 bit in JRiver, so it's outputting a bunch of extra zero's to the DAC.  Sometimes after a few moments it switches down to 16. Like you, my previous DAC (ODAC) didn't display anything so I couldn't see this before.  I think this is fine.

good info, thanks. I will say that I re-burned Moving Pictures dvd audio in alac format, and this time it does read as 96/24, whereas I burned Dream Theater's self titled dvd audio for a second time, and it's still 96/16. You know what? Who cares! It's dynamic and it sounds great. If I didn't have the display, I wouldn't care

 

[SharpEars]

Does anyone know how Asynchronous USB data gets to the Sabre on the HA-1? Is it re-encoded into an S/PDIF signal, is it converted to an I2S signal or what other possibilities are there and which one of them is actually used?
 
I am still trying to figure out which is the better connection option USB vs S/PDIF (coax) from a low jitter source.

 

[aamefford]

  Does anyone know how Asynchronous USB data gets to the Sabre on the HA-1? Is it re-encoded into an S/PDIF signal, is it converted to an I2S signal or what other possibilities are there and which one of them is actually used?
 
I am still trying to figure out which is the better connection option USB vs S/PDIF (coax) from a low jitter source.

Ermmmm.... The one that sounds the best to you?

 

[wgb113]

Just ordered one today - should have it sometime next week.  It's going up against my Schiit Gungnir/Asgard 2 stack from a sound quality standpoint but my real draw were the following:
 
DSD capability
Remote control
USB connectivity - my Gungnir is sans USB
Display
Balanced headphone
One-box solution
 
It will be primarily used as a DAC in my setup with occasional headphone amp use.  Anxious to hear how it matches up.
 
Bill