[olegausany]

Just got confirmation email too

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[MR22]

mine arrived today...
 
love the black
love the glass
love the glowing tubes
 
do not love how it only just goes loud enough, what am I going to do when I go deaf/quiet tracks?
do not love how the C-Media USB chip is pesky, when it occasionally goes crackily and needs the unit powered down :|
 
quite love how well it goes with the HD800's, currently enjoying going through plenty of the Star Trek theme music

 

[RapidPulse]

^  You know there is a gain switch, right?  Please be careful of your ears!!

 

[groovyd]

knock on wood i have not experienced the crackly behavior yet... is this a C-Media issue or perhaps a circuit problem that perhaps only some units have or is it a compatibility issue with certain usb chipsets or laptops?

 

[olegausany]

Have no problems with my unit and after about 18 hours started to like upgrade tubes

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[GalaxyGuy]

Quote:

mine arrived today...
 
love the black
love the glass
love the glowing tubes
 
do not love how it only just goes loud enough, what am I going to do when I go deaf/quiet tracks?
do not love how the C-Media USB chip is pesky, when it occasionally goes crackily and needs the unit powered down :|
 
quite love how well it goes with the HD800's, currently enjoying going through plenty of the Star Trek theme music

Yikes!  I can't turn my WA7 past 12 o'clock with my HD800s.  At 12 o'clock the sound coming from my 800s is so devastatingly loud that I can't listen for very long.  I think 10 o'clock is pleasant.  Are you sure there isn't something else in your source chain that is attenuating the signal that the amp is getting.  

 

[GalaxyGuy]

Hi All,
 
I'm having a bit of trouble with my WA7 and was wondering if anyone else out there was having the same issue or knew of a solution. Actually I've been having the problem for some time now, but last night it seems to have gotten worse.  While listening to the amp a high pitch (~1000 Hz) squelching noise sometimes appears.  In the past this noise has been stopped by simply pausing the music I'm listening to and then restarting it right away.  Last night, however, the problem persisted for some time after pausing; I would need to pause the music for 20 to 30 seconds and then restart in order to get rid of the noise.  In addition, the noise seemed to appear more frequently last night.  At any rate, if anyone out there has an idea of what's going on, I'd love to hear from them.  FYI, my source chain is very simple: MacBookPro USB out to WA7 in to T5p.  Nothing else in the chain, really.
 
Thanks in advance for any help some of you experts might offer!

 

[TheGrumpyOldMan]

I've posted about the above issue a couple of months ago when I received my pre-order WA7. Didn't get much response. Happens sporadically, sometimes I go a couple of weeks without a hitch. When it does happen, it tends to be persistent. I usually do what you described, but sometimes just turn the thing off for a while, or at least pull off the USB cable since that's what actually powers the DAC section (AFAIK).
 
Seems to be an issue with the DAC incorrectly decoding the audiostream, besides generally being the weakest part of the package, compared to any desktop DAC solution I've tried, most cheaper than the WA7... The amp section is great of course, and can be fed through RCA In.
 
Since the above glitch happens very seldom to me, and I finally found some headphones that work well enough with the DAC's rather particular bright sound signature, so I just live with it as is, fed via USB from an iMac using BitPerfect for playback. (btw. early on I tested if it was the culprit, but it also happens straight from iTunes through Core Audio)
 
If anybody has any other insight, I'd welcome it too. It seems to be too rare and random to be a straight-up defect, but the Ti PCM5102A DAC chip is relatively new & unknown it seems, so it just might be a bit glitchy. With the same setup, I've certainly never had that particular issue with any other DAC (Sabre, Wolfson or AD-based)

 

[MR22]

Gain is on maximum (the high impedance setting, Hi-z) not sure if the settings are wrong or maybe something else, are there any other settings? I have been using winamp and VLC with their gains up as high as they go without inducing their own distortion, maybe I just like it loud!
 
with the C-media, it happens if I even bump the cable, will try a few other cables but I'm not expecting too much, maybe the USB port I'm using is a bit off, I've had that before.

 

[RapidPulse]

There must be some system level volume control that is the culprit?

 

[GalaxyGuy]

Quote:

There must be some system level volume control that is the culprit?

That's what I think, as well.

 

[GalaxyGuy]

Quote:

I've posted about the above issue a couple of months ago when I received my pre-order WA7. Didn't get much response. Happens sporadically, sometimes I go a couple of weeks without a hitch. When it does happen, it tends to be persistent. I usually do what you described, but sometimes just turn the thing off for a while, or at least pull off the USB cable since that's what actually powers the DAC section (AFAIK).
 
Seems to be an issue with the DAC incorrectly decoding the audiostream, besides generally being the weakest part of the package, compared to any desktop DAC solution I've tried, most cheaper than the WA7... The amp section is great of course, and can be fed through RCA In.
 
Since the above glitch happens very seldom to me, and I finally found some headphones that work well enough with the DAC's rather particular bright sound signature, so I just live with it as is, fed via USB from an iMac using BitPerfect for playback. (btw. early on I tested if it was the culprit, but it also happens straight from iTunes through Core Audio)
 
If anybody has any other insight, I'd welcome it too. It seems to be too rare and random to be a straight-up defect, but the Ti PCM5102A DAC chip is relatively new & unknown it seems, so it just might be a bit glitchy. With the same setup, I've certainly never had that particular issue with any other DAC (Sabre, Wolfson or AD-based)

The DAC chip sounds reasonable.  I'll try running an external DAC and just using the amp section to see if that helps.  Last night it didn't happen at all in a relatively short listening session using a different source.  Maybe it has something to do with how my Mac talks to the DAC?  At any rate, I have an external DAC, so maybe I'll give that a try.

 

[MR22]

How is the system volume the culprit? it's Digital, the system just tells the DAC how loud to play, the system does not increase the volume of what is sent to the DAC, the reason I get distortion from audio players is that they send a clipped signal to the amplifier past a certain point when I screw with the gain controls, this distortion is present even with the WA7 at low volumes (9 o clock)
 
It does the crackily thing even when it's at low volume (as in even at 9 o clock) , I find switching it off for 2 min a few times eventually gets rid of it at all volumes

 

[GalaxyGuy]

Quote:

How is the system volume the culprit? it's Digital, the system just tells the DAC how loud to play, the system does not increase the volume of what is sent to the DAC, the reason I get distortion from audio players is that they send a clipped signal to the amplifier past a certain point when I screw with the gain controls, this distortion is present even with the WA7 at low volumes (9 o clock)
 
It does the crackily thing even when it's at low volume (as in even at 9 o clock) , I find switching it off for 2 min a few times eventually gets rid of it at all volumes

When I change the system volume on my Mac it changes the volume of what I hear at the headphones through the DAC/amp.  If the system volume is muted, my amp will not produce a signal regardless of the setting of the attenuator on the amp.

 

[DougofTheAbaci]

When I change the system volume on my Mac it changes the volume of what I hear at the headphones through the DAC/amp.  If the system volume is muted, my amp will not produce a signal regardless of the setting of the attenuator on the amp.

Are you not using the DAC? My Bifrost and my Leckerton (when using TOSLINK) override OS X's audio controls.