[ThanatosVI]

I am now a member of this illustrious club! Just got my Wavelight shipped to me by DHL and am in the process of setting it up. I'm hopeful this will be a big upgrade from my iFi iDSD Pro...

Oh you're in for a treat. Welcome to the Club!

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

Congratulations! Waiting how it pairs with the Inpol Ear!

 

[dcguy73]

I immediately noticed that even at 100% volume from the Wavelight at 5.8 VRMS, there's no clipping with the InPol Ear, not even at 120 volume on the InPol. Why do I believe anything I read on the Internet? I could have bought the May KTE Dac and been just fine at 6 VRMS with no clipping. True, I would have waited another five weeks for the May DAC to be delivered, but I could've traded in my Holo Spring KTE and gotten a better deal on the May KTE Dac than I did on the Wavelight.

All right, enough about that. Clean slate. I will give this DAC a fair shake.

EDIT: I'm wrong. The May KTE wouldn't have worked after all. The Wavelight at 100% volume = 5.8 VRMS = too much output for the InPol Ear. It doesn't clip, but it doesn't sound very good at that volume. Thank goodness the Wavelight has a preamp/volume control.

 

[ThanatosVI]

I immediately noticed that even at 100% volume from the Wavelight at 5.8 VRMS, there's no clipping with the InPol Ear, not even at 120 volume on the InPol. Why do I believe anything I read on the Internet? I could have bought the May KTE Dac and been just fine at 6 VRMS with no clipping. True, I would have waited another five weeks for the May DAC to be delivered, but I could've traded in my Holo Spring KTE and gotten a better deal on the May KTE Dac than I did on the Wavelight.

All right, enough about that. Clean slate. I will give this DAC a fair shake.

Between those two it's a matter of preference though.
It's not like you have a worse DAC now.

(And cant you just sell the Spring to make it also equivalent in terms of investment?)

Furthermore, can't you just ask Tim from Kitsune if he can modify the XLR out to use the Standard 4V, if you're concerned about that?
That's the beauty of "build to order", adjustments like these are possible most of the time at no additional charge

 

[dcguy73]

Between those two it's a matter of preference though.
It's not like you have a worse DAC now.

(And cant you just sell the Spring to make it also equivalent in terms of investment?)

Furthermore, can't you just ask Tim from Kitsune if he can modify the XLR out to use the Standard 4V, if you're concerned about that?
That's the beauty of "build to order", adjustments like these are possible most of the time at no additional charge

You're right. It's just sour grapes. I'll give the Wavelight a chance.

 

[dcguy73]

Well, the setup process was certainly easy. I registered at the Rockna site, downloaded the app, plugged in my I2S cable, and was ready to go immediately.

The sound so far? Disappointing. My iDSD Pro isn't the world's greatest DAC, but I had completely optimized my setup, and I got used to the iFi hardware upsampling to 784K or DSD. I've been pressing buttons on the Wavelight trying to get it to upsample, and guess what, the Wavelight doesn't do that. For some reason, I thought it did.

Compared to my optimized iDSD Pro, the Wavelight in my setup sounds a bit forward and a little strident. I'll give it more time and there's a lot more fiddling I can do with cables and such. I've got HQPlayer Embedded going on my music server, so upsampling is taken care of now.

Granted, it's only been plugged in for a few hours, but first impressions are meh.

 

[Roasty]

The wavelight doesn't upsample.
U can feed it up to 384 from hqplayer, but from my own experience (which I have just repeated over the last weekend), I still prefer sending non upsampled to the wavelight over hqplayer. Try 44.1 redbook and see how that fares.

What amp are u feeding it into? Try reduce the dac volume to around 75 and adjust the volume up on your amp accordingly. I had an issue with sound/distortion causing very forward highs and lack of bass when using 100 dac volume into my headphone amp.

 

[dcguy73]

The wavelight doesn't upsample.
U can feed it up to 384 from hqplayer, but from my own experience (which I have just repeated over the last weekend), I still prefer sending non upsampled to the wavelight over hqplayer. Try 44.1 redbook and see how that fares.

What amp are u feeding it into? Try reduce the dac volume to around 75 and adjust the volume up on your amp accordingly. I had an issue with sound/distortion causing very forward highs and lack of bass when using 100 dac volume into my headphone amp.

Great call! I maxed out the volume on my headphone amp and turned the Wavelight volume down. Now I control the system volume with the Rockna, I'm at 30 with the volume settings. Sooo much better. The stridency is gone.

 

[Roasty]

Great call! I maxed out the volume on my headphone amp and turned the Wavelight volume down. Now I control the system volume with the Rockna, I'm at 30 with the volume settings. Sooo much better. The stridency is gone.

Glad that sorted it out!
The wavelight is a really good dac. I enjoyed it more than the Dave. I have a May KTE on order and will do a comparison when I get it.

The Rockna outputs quite high vrms via the balanced outs. I found out the hard way, thinking my susvara was the culprit. I believe the issue is with the high vrms output as well as the +8dB factory gain. Just need to control the output so it doesn't clip or cause distortion into the headphone amp.

Enjoy man!

 

[dcguy73]

It's sounding better now that I made some adjustments...I'll let it run overnight and continue burn-in.

 

[EagleWings]

I also belong to the camp that finds the Wavelight a bit strident even in NOS mode. Most folks here and on the other forum don’t find it to be the case.

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

Continue to give it some burn-in time.

 

[EagleWings]

Have put in close to 500Hrs. And the stridency doesn't go away even when kept on for 2 days.

 

[ThanatosVI]

Well, the setup process was certainly easy. I registered at the Rockna site, downloaded the app, plugged in my I2S cable, and was ready to go immediately.

The sound so far? Disappointing. My iDSD Pro isn't the world's greatest DAC, but I had completely optimized my setup, and I got used to the iFi hardware upsampling to 784K or DSD. I've been pressing buttons on the Wavelight trying to get it to upsample, and guess what, the Wavelight doesn't do that. For some reason, I thought it did.

Compared to my optimized iDSD Pro, the Wavelight in my setup sounds a bit forward and a little strident. I'll give it more time and there's a lot more fiddling I can do with cables and such. I've got HQPlayer Embedded going on my music server, so upsampling is taken care of now.

Granted, it's only been plugged in for a few hours, but first impressions are meh.

The Wavelight DAC has 8x Oversampling Filters, linear, minimum Phase and hybrid.

The Wavelight Server will have the functionality to upsample into the connected DAC

 

[GoodEnoughGear]

Have put in close to 500Hrs. And the stridency doesn't go away even when kept on for 2 days.

Curious if the stridency primarily over 2 channel or headphones or both?