First post on the forum, but here we go
So after having read a lot about the zero dac on this forum and also having listened to it at one of my friends house, I finally decided to buy it. The unit looks good and when it plays, it plays really well, except for the sound to be a little unbalanced L/R at low levels. However I have come across a problem which I cannot find help on fixing anywhere.
I use the zero on my pc (with a creative SB X-Fi card) to double as a headphone amp for my Denon AH-D2000's and a preamp for my stereo amplifier. The zero I have received is the 2009 model (with USB) and has been upgraded with the OPA627 opamps.
As until last week I have been using the "Speakers" setting in the windows 7 "sound" control panel, which has been working fine (and still is). However when I got my Denon's last week I noticed the option to set "SPDIF Out" in the "sound" options to "set as default device". I immediately heard an improvement in sound quality and therefore naturally wish to keep using this setting. However this is where the problem is.
When running the zero with the SPDIF out set as "default device" I hear a short, but loud, static "click" every time I start a music file on my computer, also when there is silence between individual songs in a playlist, and also when opening movies etc. Basically the static "click" occurs every time there is no continuous audio output through the SPDIF Out, so when an audio clip is played it starts with the static "click", then the song plays, and ends with a static "click" after it is over. This seems strange as there is no problem when using the "speakers" "as default device" setting except for overall lower sound quality of course.
To make things even more strange, if I open an audio file in say, windows media player, then stop it again, but leave the program open in the background, the problem seems to disappear for as long as I just leave media player open in the background.
I tried my dac at my friends place on his computer, and the problem was the same. However his dac (which is the old model without USB function) does not have this static "click" problem as mine does when using the SPDIF Out. So something seems to be wrong with my zero, except it can be fixed by leaving a song paused in windows media player.. Very strange, and annoying.
As a final note I can ad that the zero also plays a static noise when powering up for about 2 seconds. I don't know if that is normal or not, however that doesn't really bother me.
If someone has a solution to this problem or has had a similar experience with the zero I would be overly glad to hear how to solve this problem
Ps. I hope that this hasn't been posted before, at least I couldn't find it anywhere.