[joomongj]

I just got my copy yesterday. Hooked it up to my PC and as advertised, it's just plug and play. Performance is also very good and very transparent w/ very high accuracy. On a side note, I also have HD800s coming, which should be delivered soon so I'm super hyped up about it as well. Anyway, I've noticed the top metal piece gets pretty warm after a couple of hours of use and the bottom gets almost hot to the touch of bare hands. So I was wondering what are the nominal operating temps of the device? Maybe I haven't looked enough but I can't find anything in the supplied manual or the quick googling I did. Turning off the computer doesn't seem to turn the device off, so if I want to keep it cool since temps are the prime enemy of electronic circuit elements will I have to manually unplug the power cord in order to bring down the temp when not using?

Also I've noticed when I use it as a DAC & amp, it overrides the Windows' default volume control scheme effectively making it immune to any kind of volume swing. Will that be also true if I also use it as just an amp hooked up to my ipod or my pc soundcard or will I have 2 volume controls (1 of ipod/soundcard and 1 of Pre's)? I have to wait a few more days to verify this myself as I don't have a 3.5mm-to-RCA cable w/ me (which I ordered alongside HD800) right now. If you have useful answers/comments for either of my questions, I'd appreciate it.