[sgr1]

Quote:

I received a review sample from Fang today and have been listening for some hours tonight. I used it with an Acer Aspire 1410 super netbook running foobar2000 wasapi playing flac 16/44 up to 24/96. Compared to the build in soundcard it is a huge step up in sq in every aspect. There are however several problems. The main one is that it extremely sensetive to rf noise. I have a cordless phone base station in my bedroom where I have been listening and the unit is unusable within about 4 feet from the base station. Move further away though and noise trails rapidly off and at about 8 feet is inaudible even with JH13. The other problem is that the output is much to loud for my liking. With the HE-500 I can't go above about 15% of the volume scale in foobar before it gets too loud and with JH13 I have to be well under 10% which does not give much fine control over volume. Used as a line source to feed and external amp this is less of a problem and the rf noise is also less audible used this way. At $39 I think it is very good and probably at least on par with the iBasso T3 at more than twice the price for only an amp. I'm sure that this will be living with my netbook in the future, just wish the netbook had the usb port on the rear for better cable routing.
 
EDIT: Just found out that I can change the width of the volume slider panel in foobar to get more control. DOH

Is it confirmed that we can listen to 24/96 files? I googled the burr-brown pcm2702 chip and it seems to be only good for up to 16/44.
 
Does anyone have an idea how it pairs up with the Hifiman EF5? thanks
 

 

[EpicPie]

Is it confirmed that we can listen to 24/96 files? I googled the burr-brown pcm2702 chip and it seems to be only good for up to 16/44.
 
Does anyone have an idea how it pairs up with the Hifiman EF5? thanks
 

Mine only goes to 16/48 at most. I have it set on 16/44 though.

 

[nc8000]

Yes 16/48 is the most it does, higher res has to be downsampled by the player application

 

[tim3320070]

I've been using mine for a few days now. It does 2 thing pretty well, it increases output by quite a bit compared to my laptop sound making it possible to use my DT770/600 whereas I had to max the volume to get a decent volume level. Second, it warms the sound just a bit as compared to the Dell Studio integrated sound (vocals are a touch fuller). My biggest complaint with it is that is does not reduce hiss (in particular with my Klipsch X10's) very much- maybe 20% less, but definitely less. This was my main objective in buying this. I had a iBasso D10 that was silent but it was $180. Also using the line out for headphones is a fail IMO as the sound is thin unpleasant compared to the HO.
 
So all in all, for $43 shipped, it's not bad and can make some hard to drive headphones usable which may be worth it to some who don't want to shell out much or who have a very poor sound card. It's probably the cheapest way to boost output that doesn't make things sound worse, mostly better.

 

[EpicPie]

Edited my first post. The DAC works on Ubuntu's latest release as well.

 

[AirForceTeacher]

My Boxee computer right now plugs straight from the sound card to the receiver, and the receiver has to be pumped up really high to heard movie dialogue, making the background hiss terrible. How would this do in its place - is the output volume pretty strong? Any noise from the line out?

 

[nc8000]

The output signal is very strong but I don't know your computer. I find lots of noise with my sample if there is a rf source near but otherwise no noise at all. Fang has told me that they should have solved the rf interference issue and a new sampl is on it's way to me but I have not received it yet.

 

[nc8000]

Have received a new sample and the rf issue has clearly been improved upon but unfortunately not been completely resolved. To be clear the sources that introduce the noise is a cell phone when on edge but not on 3G or wifi and a wireless home phone setup

 

[Noir7]

 
btw whats the different the line out and the headphone out?
i still can adjust the volume both way, i though that a line out supposed to have a fixed volume level?

 

[ClieOS]

btw whats the different the line out and the headphone out?


i still can adjust the volume both way, i though that a line out supposed to have a fixed volume level?

If you are referring to adjusting volume on the PC, then you are adjusting volume on the digital domain and it has nothing to do with the hardware. Though it is possible to disable digital volume control on the USB chip, but I guess HifiMan didn't choose to do that as it will affect the headphone-out as well. You just need to set it to max volume on the PC if you want the full line-out signal. That's not a defect, but a limitation due to the small size and limited hardware design that can be putted into a tiny DAC.

 

[Noir7]

Quote:

If you are referring to adjusting volume on the PC, then you are adjusting volume on the digital domain and it has nothing to do with the hardware. Though it is possible to disable digital volume control on the USB chip, but I guess HifiMan didn't choose to do that as it will affect the headphone-out as well. You just need to set it to max volume on the PC if you want the full line-out signal. That's not a defect, but a limitation due to the small size and limited hardware design that can be putted into a tiny DAC.

i see thanks for your explanation

 

[doxology]

is there anything similar to this in this price range that has a normal audio input of some sort? this sounds like a great cheap solution for laptops and desktops and even secondary tv's if it had some sort of audio input. is there anything like that out there that doesn't raise the price significantly?

 

[Ulti]

Can anyone compare this to the E7?

 

[EpicPie]

Re-worded a few things in my review.

 

[Selenium]

Got one. Any reason why I shouldn't use the line-out instead of the headphone jack? As far as I can tell it sounds almost the same and there's no noise.