[FraGGleR]

It was originally open to something like the first 40 people. Send a message to CEntrance.

 

[Saraguie]

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There should be a FAQ!
 

 
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FAQ thread please.

 
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Please let's have a FAQ, I think it would be helpful beyond measure!

 

[Overkill Red]

I'm in

Sending payment soon and ready to be blown away! This will be my first product from CEntrance, but I've tried a DACport before and I expect the M8 will blow my mind even more!

 

[Sid-Fi]

You got into the preorder special? Snap, I need to get my e-mail off.
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I'm in

Sending payment soon and ready to be blown away! This will be my first product from CEntrance, but I've tried a DACport before and I expect the M8 will blow my mind even more!

 

[Overkill Red]

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You got into the preorder special? Snap, I need to get my e-mail off.

 
Yeah Stacie was very responsive!

 

[mgoodman]

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Michael, since we are getting so close (yea!) I think it would be good to state our choices for the front panel options, please?

Outputs are same as before:
1) 4-pin XLR + 1/4" + combo 1/8"
2) 4-pin RSA + 1/4" + combo 1/8"
3) Dual combo 3-pin jack
 
There will be also a version with dual male XLRs, which we will offer to the pro market (recording, broadcast, live sound, etc.), but that version is less attractive to the home community, so I haven't talked about it much.

 

[mgoodman]

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I'm curious.  What headphone is CEntrance testing with this new product?  How will power hungry cans fair?  If its already listed somewhere, I apologize...

We have a selection of headphones from Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser, Audeze, Sony and other here, including a bunch of IEMs. We are mostly testing with the hard-to-drive headphones to make sure the output level is sufficient.
 
So far it appears that it is.

 

[mgoodman]

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Here's a question for the crowd or for Michael - 
 
The 2 x 3 pin XLR's technically have 3 contacts / wires per channel, at least available.  Balanced headphones usually use just 2 wires per channel, unless I guess if one were to use a shielded cable?
 
The 1 x 4 pin XLR has 2 contacts / wires available per channel.  Does this give up any functionality over the 2 x 3 pin XLR?
 
Does the HFI-M8 have a chassis ground or other use for the 3rd pin on 2 x 3 pin XLR?  If it does, how might I make use of it?  The only real use for shielded cable is microphone cable, as far as I know (which is none too far where pro audio is concerned, but I'd love to learn more...).
 
Anyway, what I'm getting at - Is there a conceivable use for the 2 x 3 pin XLR that cannot be done at all or as well with the 4 pin XLR?  As long as I'm buying an audio swiss army knife, I really want to have all the info I can get in order to select the right tool set on my knife, ahh, M8!
 
Note my usage is basically home, office and on the go listening for now, but you never know what might come up...
 
Thanks all!

A balanced connection involves two wires for each channel -- one wire for the plus terminal and another wire for the minus terminal. A properly balanced cable should have the two wires run in a twisted pair. A third wire typically serves as a shield/ground. It usually carries no return current and only acts as RF protection. To avoid starting a small scale "cable war", I would defer to cable manufacturers for proper cable choice  
 
Since the third wire carries no current, it can serve as a shield for one pair or two pairs without significant performance degradation. Two 3-pin XLR connectors will simply have the ground wire terminated at the ground terminal of each jack. A single 4-pin XLR connector will have the single or dual ground wire terminated at the ground terminal of the jack. There may be one shield (ground) wire in the cable or two wires basically doing the same thing, depending on cable design. There should be no appreciable difference whether you go with 3-pin XLR or 4-pin XLR, but having said that I have probably alienated 116% of the reader base...
 
Baaad Michael!

 

[mgoodman]

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Would this device use its power supply only through the built-in rechargeable battery (like a mobile phone for instance) or would it bypass that circuitry & enable operating it directly through the mains when plugged in (e.g. like a laptop)? I hope it does not sound picky; I just dislike using batteries when I do not have to. Thanks

When the HiFi-M8 is plugged into the wall via the supplied power supply adapter, it will use the energy from the adapter to run the curcuit and to charge the battery at the same time. If you have an iDevice connected, it will also charge that device. While the battery is being charged, it cannot simultaneously be discharged (it's one or the other), so while it's charging, the battery is effectively out of the circuit and the unit is running entirely on wall power. Once the battery reaches 100% charge, the charging will stop, but the unit will continue to run off the wall adapter. The battery will continue to be out of the curcuit and will occasionally receive charging pulses to "top it off".
 
The unit will switch to battery power only once the wall power adapter has been removed.

 

[mgoodman]

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How long is this limited period? With customs and 20% VAT considerations it would probably still be cheaper to see a UK stockist if there will ever be one?

If you are interested in learning more about shipping options to UK, please email us at "sales [at] centrance [dot] com". We try to accommodate international customers. We know that the rest of the world exists somewhere out there

 

[karasrg]

The HiFi-M8 support streams USB digital audio from WindowsPhone8 ?

 

[Saraguie]

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Michael, since we are getting so close (yea!) I think it would be good to state our choices for the front panel options, please?
 

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Outputs are same as before:
1) 4-pin XLR + 1/4" + combo 1/8"
2) 4-pin RSA + 1/4" + combo 1/8"
3) Dual combo 3-pin jack
 
There will be also a version with dual male XLRs, which we will offer to the pro market (recording, broadcast, live sound, etc.), but that version is less attractive to the home community, so I haven't talked about it much.

 
Thank you! CEntrance and yourself are so accommodating. We are all going to be spoiled expecting other companies we deal with to act in kind and then it's not going to be!

 

[aamefford]

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Spoiler: Warning%3A%20Spoiler!

 
A balanced connection involves two wires for each channel -- one wire for the plus terminal and another wire for the minus terminal. A properly balanced cable should have the two wires run in a twisted pair. A third wire typically serves as a shield/ground. It usually carries no return current and only acts as RF protection. To avoid starting a small scale "cable war", I would defer to cable manufacturers for proper cable choice  
 
Since the third wire carries no current, it can serve as a shield for one pair or two pairs without significant performance degradation. Two 3-pin XLR connectors will simply have the ground wire terminated at the ground terminal of each jack. A single 4-pin XLR connector will have the single or dual ground wire terminated at the ground terminal of the jack. There may be one shield (ground) wire in the cable or two wires basically doing the same thing, depending on cable design. There should be no appreciable difference whether you go with 3-pin XLR or 4-pin XLR, but having said that I have probably alienated 116% of the reader base...
 
Baaad Michael!
 

 
So, 3 pin x 2 could have a 3rd wire acting as a shield, 4 pin x 1 does not, just 2 twisted pairs, or likely 2 twisted pairs leading to a braid of the headphone cable, but no shield.
 
HPA or someone with a bunch of balanced headphones - am I correct in thinking that the 2 x 3 pin option only used 2 connectors on each 3 pin XLR, and the 4 pin uses all 4, in each case for the + and - of each channel?
 
I really don't see that I'm losing anything with the 4 pin unless I end up running a looong cable with analog out to an amp or something - in this case shielding might benefit in reducing RF interference.  Again - am I thinking about this correctly?

 

[Armaegis]

Even on the 4-pin XLR, there's an extra pin that lets you tie a ground wire to the shell so you can get shielding that way if you need it. 

 

[mgoodman]

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Even on the 4-pin XLR, there's an extra pin that lets you tie a ground wire to the shell so you can get shielding that way if you need it. 

- This is true for the 4-pin Neutrik jack, where a separate ground pin exists, so in total, the 4-pin Neutrik connector actually has 5 pins (4 signal pins + 1 ground/shield pin). 
 
- This is not true for the RSA/IRIS jack. There, a fifth ground/shield pin is not available. Only four signal pins are available (+/- Left, +/- Right).
 
So, technically, from the standpoint of RF shielding, the Neutrik jack is better than RSA jack because it has a provision to ground the braid (shield) of the cable. The Neutrik jack is also more robust physically, but it's larger, so pick your poison.
 
I don't know how individual manufacturers terminate their HP cables, but the better way is to run a shielded cable to each headphone and terminate the shield (braid) at the ground pin of the equipment side connector. You'd do this for each of the 3 pin "mono" balanced connectors and once for the 4-pin "stereo" balanced connector.
 
Having said that, there is a big difference between the kind of signal that travels down a microphone cable (from a microphone to a mixing console) and the kind that travels down the headphone cable (from HPA to HP). The difference in voltage level is over 1000 times (1mV vs. 1V, slightly simplified for the sake of example). This means that the shielding requirements of a microphone cable are much more stringent than those of a headphone cable.
 
In practice, it's less important to have proper shielding on the headphone cable. A twisted pair would likely do just fine for short distances. But a shielded twisted pair, using oxygen-free copper (or better yet, silver) would bring an improvement. After that you get into esoteric, "price is no object" kind of stuff with multicore wiring, special braiding, etc. But that's a separate thread