corinthos
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2003
- Posts
- 21
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Hi All,
I just got a Xiang Sheng DAC-05A which uses dual balanced Burr Brown 1794 DACs and has XLR outputs. I'm connecting it to my laptop via USB, then from the DAC it's going out thru the XLR ports into my Audio-gd NFB-1AMP XLR inputs. I've got my headphones plugged into the NFB-1AMP's single ended headphone jack.
I'm very pleased with the sound quality using this DAC. I think what it gives me is more definition and better separation. I've compared thru speakers by testing both using the DAC and also just connecting my laptop directly via audio jack without the DAC. My initial impression without the DAC is that the music seems more mushed/blended together and with the DAC it seems more spaced out and overall more pleasing to listen to. But I'll have to do some more A/B testing and also use headphones to see if this is real or just my imagination. It did seem like even when using my phone's headphone jack, it sounded better than just thru my laptop's audio jack. Perhaps it has a better DAC, too?
Anyway, during my listening sessions with both headphone and speakers, I would experience intermittent static noise out of one channel, always the same channel (my left ear cup of my headphone, and my left speaker. At first, I thought my Audio-gd had a bad single ended headphone jack, because I had my Sony MDR-V6 plugged in and got intermittent static noise from my left headphone cup, but then I plugged in my Sennheiser HD-598 and didn't experience noise, so I thought it was an issue with my MDR-V6 headphone plug.
But after further testing with speakers and headphones, I found that the intermittent static noise appeared also on my left speaker. I tried isolation experiments to narrow things down to identify the culprit and connected just the DAC to my amp and laptop using XLR cables and I noticed the signal light of my left channel (CH1) of my amp wasn't solid green like my right channel light was.. and I heard intermittent static out of the left speaker. So I removed the DAC and connected my laptop directly to amp using the headphone jack to RCA and no static. The signal LEDs were both the same intensity of green on the amp.
I then tried using RCA cables from DAC to NFB-1AMP and the static went away. I then switched to the XLR connectors and I got the intermittent static again.
So it seems to confirm that there's something wrong with my DAC's XLR outputs and it's causing the static out of one channel intermittently.
When I first power on and listen via XLR, it sounds fine.. then some time into my listening (maybe within 1 song), the static appears.
I'm hoping it's a USB/WASAPI driver issue on Win10, but if it were, wouldn't it also affect RCA output from my DAC and not just XLR?
Please help! I need to determine if the DAC is defective and whether I need to arrange a return.
I just got a Xiang Sheng DAC-05A which uses dual balanced Burr Brown 1794 DACs and has XLR outputs. I'm connecting it to my laptop via USB, then from the DAC it's going out thru the XLR ports into my Audio-gd NFB-1AMP XLR inputs. I've got my headphones plugged into the NFB-1AMP's single ended headphone jack.
I'm very pleased with the sound quality using this DAC. I think what it gives me is more definition and better separation. I've compared thru speakers by testing both using the DAC and also just connecting my laptop directly via audio jack without the DAC. My initial impression without the DAC is that the music seems more mushed/blended together and with the DAC it seems more spaced out and overall more pleasing to listen to. But I'll have to do some more A/B testing and also use headphones to see if this is real or just my imagination. It did seem like even when using my phone's headphone jack, it sounded better than just thru my laptop's audio jack. Perhaps it has a better DAC, too?
Anyway, during my listening sessions with both headphone and speakers, I would experience intermittent static noise out of one channel, always the same channel (my left ear cup of my headphone, and my left speaker. At first, I thought my Audio-gd had a bad single ended headphone jack, because I had my Sony MDR-V6 plugged in and got intermittent static noise from my left headphone cup, but then I plugged in my Sennheiser HD-598 and didn't experience noise, so I thought it was an issue with my MDR-V6 headphone plug.
But after further testing with speakers and headphones, I found that the intermittent static noise appeared also on my left speaker. I tried isolation experiments to narrow things down to identify the culprit and connected just the DAC to my amp and laptop using XLR cables and I noticed the signal light of my left channel (CH1) of my amp wasn't solid green like my right channel light was.. and I heard intermittent static out of the left speaker. So I removed the DAC and connected my laptop directly to amp using the headphone jack to RCA and no static. The signal LEDs were both the same intensity of green on the amp.
I then tried using RCA cables from DAC to NFB-1AMP and the static went away. I then switched to the XLR connectors and I got the intermittent static again.
So it seems to confirm that there's something wrong with my DAC's XLR outputs and it's causing the static out of one channel intermittently.
When I first power on and listen via XLR, it sounds fine.. then some time into my listening (maybe within 1 song), the static appears.
I'm hoping it's a USB/WASAPI driver issue on Win10, but if it were, wouldn't it also affect RCA output from my DAC and not just XLR?
Please help! I need to determine if the DAC is defective and whether I need to arrange a return.
