[alota]

From my experience FAW cables are really good but not oriented to audiophile that likes to spend a lot of money

 

[Tuneslover]

  That's good to know that the stock cables in your opinion (along with many others) are good. It really sucks to be a noob not knowing any of this stuff. I'm just trying to make good decisions based off everyone's recommendations/opinions without "wasting" a bunch of money on needless upgrades. 
And yes, I've read exactly what you're advising about swapping out the stock cable for the 4 pin xlr for the Jot. THAT seems the way I should go seeing I'm going to have this amp in a few weeks. I'm extremely stoked!!
I appreciate your time to respond back to my questions.

I bought a USED "fancy" cable (so it wasn't too expensive) and found that I still preferred the stock cable.  I ended up selling that cable and converted my stock cable to XLR when I got the Jot.  If you do decide to re-terminate your stock cable I would suggest that you simply cut the stock cable about 8" - 12" from the plug end and terminate the stock cable end with a male 4 pin XLR and the short piece with a female 4 pin XLR.  That way you'll have a Balanced-to-SE adaptor for your HD650's in case you have any other SE amps.

 

[MikeW]

Im pretty good with a soldering iron, and i've made custom cables before, i've never reterminated the stock 650 cable though, I heard the wires are tiny and the copper is varnished. I was going to give it a shot, but now im not sure it's worth the trouble. This cable looks interesting
 
http://www.ebay.com/itm/112280167578?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
 
if it sounds at least as good as the stock cable while being balanced, at that price, seems like a no brainer.
 
Edit: i'd like to reinforce, that im enjoying the Jot Internal dac alot more now, I really feel like you need a regen/wyrd/recovery type device with this dac, I think alot of people are listening to it straight and they are missing out. It really transformed mine... rather dramatically. Unfortunately, for the price of the Dac card (100$) and a Regen (100 used), you could damn near buy a mimby, witch i've yet to hear, of course, you'd probably want a Regen to go with the mimby anyways, so there is that.
 
Im actually using a W4S Recovery and an Ifi Ipower with mine. Both improved the sound, the W4S was dramatic, the Ifi Ipower was less so, but noticeable. The dac is USB powered, so anyway you can improve that power delivery, it will yield benefits. This is more obvious on this particular Schiit implementation, I don't know if any of their other DAC products are USB Powered. (maybe fulla?) I also taped the usb +5v power pin going from the PC to the Recovery (the 6" tail going from recovery to DAC is still providing +5V for the DAC, post recovery)
 
The main improvements heard with the addition of the Recovery and Ifipower, were just a more pleasing, less fatiguing sound, particularly with regard to high end energy. I was often EQ'ing the high end to deal with a fatiguing sound. Bass also improved, and so did resolution, everything became warmer, and I felt like I could actually hear the signature AKM "Velvet" sound. The Recovery made the music toe-tapping, and pleasant, and the Ipower reinforced bass and top end resolution, with not much change to the middle.
 
If anything this proves, there's much room for improvement in Schiits' USB GEN 2 implementation, or perhaps said implementation works better when the dac's not relying on USB +5V.
 
Im a skeptic too, I don't believe in voodoo. And while impossible to eliminate expectation bias, I was ready to try the W4S Recovery and not like it, and sell it. That would not have been a problem for me.

 

[alpovs]

What are you feeding it with? A Mac by any chance?

 

[Tuneslover]

 


 

 
Im pretty good with a soldering iron, and i've made custom cables before, i've never reterminated the stock 650 cable though, I heard the wires are tiny and the copper is varnished.

If you're good with a soldering iron you shouldn't have any problem.  Yes the wire is tiny and is coated but take your time and melt off the coating and all will be fine.  All you need is 1 male and 1 female 4 pin XLR connector (to also make the additional XLR to SE adaptor).  The whole project should cost you no more than $15.

 

[MikeW]

nah im on a PC, pretty good pc with an Asus Enthusiast motherboard, 6700k, 32gb ram, and a seasonic X650 PSU.. everything's pretty top notch.

 

[alpovs]

I couldn't see your signature on mobile. I asked because Macs are known for noisy USB ports, especially their laptops. But it's not your case.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

Mike is on the record taking a pretty decent Schiit on USB whenever the question is asked. If you can get Mimby or Bimby, optical will make you very happy.

 

[earnmyturns]

  Mike is on the record taking a pretty decent Schiit on USB whenever the question is asked. If you can get Mimby or Bimby, optical will make you very happy.

I've used sources with optical out worse than USB out. Source-to-DAC is a system, no better than its worst component.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

  I've used sources with optical out worse than USB out. Source-to-DAC is a system, no better than its worst component.

Allow me to speak more precisely.
 
In the case of my early 2009 iMac, Bimby, and some $6 optical cable off amazon, moving from USB to optical removed a perceptible degree of blur from the music. To my ears, the sound quality was distinctly improved. The improvement was not night-and-day by any means, but it was palpable. For the money, to users of a that chain, I would recommend it unhesitatingly.

 

[earnmyturns]

 
Allow me to speak more precisely.
 
In the case of my early 2009 iMac, Bimby, and some $6 optical cable off amazon, moving from USB to optical removed a perceptible degree of blur from the music. To my ears, the sound quality was distinctly improved. The improvement was not night-and-day by any means, but it was palpable. For the money, to users of a that chain, I would recommend it unhesitatingly.

Thanks for the specifics, makes sense. The iMac USB port is likely to push some electrical noise into the Bimby, while the optical connection is immune to electrical noise. Some optical sources have lots of jitter, but your observations suggest that the iMac is good enough in that respect to work well with the Bimby.

 

[AverageGuyNC]

I have a 3 or 4 year old Dell running USB to mimby to jotunheim. There was some noise when there wasn't any audio playin at first (when mimby was new), but it has nearly disappeared. It was totally silent when the USB was going straight to the jotunheim. Guess it just needed to break in.

How much difference does a pc make? I mean, are there audio oriented motherboards? Not referring to sound cards or programs. An i5 and 8gb ram should be plenty to play music I think.

 

[earnmyturns]

How much difference does a pc make? I mean, are there audio oriented motherboards? Not referring to sound cards or programs. An i5 and 8gb ram should be plenty to play music I think.

There are two main ways a PC can matter. On the digital side, there are lots of software and driver settings that can affect the bit stream from the PC to the DAC. On the electrical side, different PCs or PC workloads inject different kinds of electrical noise into the USB wire that affect the DAC in different ways. For those reasons, I don't use PCs or Macs to drive my DACs directly. Instead, I use specialized low-power devices that take digital music streams via Ethernet and convert them to USB audio (see my sig). Not cheap, but they work very well in my situation, providing very good sound quality to two separate systems from a single music server.

 

[Voxata]

nah im on a PC, pretty good pc with an Asus Enthusiast motherboard, 6700k, 32gb ram, and a seasonic X650 PSU.. everything's pretty top notch.

Using..Optical?

 

[MikeW]

The Jotunheim dac I was discussing only has a USB input. So no optical/coax.