[Somnambulist]

I see. It's weird because my D100 was dead silent at the 230V setting. Anyway, my budget at this point is pretty much anywhere between £500-1000, it's just I'd rather not have to go to the top end unless I can help it. The Audiolab looks interesting for sure at £599, although it has a lot of features etc, and in a way I want to keep the kind of purity the D18 had where you're just paying for the DAC performance. I'm paranoid about transformers buzzing now with anything I get lol.

 

[kingoftown1]

Maybe the W4S DAC1?  It's a shame the D18 won't work for you

 

[Somnambulist]

Indeed. It sounded great... it's just I couldn't live with the buzzing.

 

[project86]

Wow, so this is theoretically a problem with the entire country you live in? That's terrible.
 
I wonder how many other folks in your area are sitting there waiting for hum to go away, not knowing about this situation.... Or maybe your area is slightly different from other regions, just enough to cause the problem? 
 
I plugged in my D18 today just to triple check, and mine is dead silent. It's strange that your D100 was fine but your D18 isn't. I thought the transformers were very similar (both Plitron). 

 

[Somnambulist]

I know, I don't pretend to understand. At least the customer service was excellent and I've been fully refunded, as well as making Yulong aware of the issue, as I'm sure they want to make sure their product is hum free. It's not very comforting knowlege though, since I have no DAC and my Focals are just expensive paperweights without one, so I need to figure out what to get quickly and order it,

 

[project86]

Quote:

I know, I don't pretend to understand. At least the customer service was excellent and I've been fully refunded, as well as making Yulong aware of the issue, as I'm sure they want to make sure their product is hum free. It's not very comforting knowlege though, since I have no DAC and my Focals are just expensive paperweights without one, so I need to figure out what to get quickly and order it,

Well, you could always buy a "temp" unit to hold you over until you find "The One". Something from the used forum here at a low price - HRT Music Streamer, Audinst HUD-mx1, something of that caliber. Should be fairly cheap and you could probably sell it at roughly the same price once you get the real thing in place. 

 

[Somnambulist]

Or... ya know... maybe get a D2. Taking the money from the D100 sale into account it would still come to £8-900 (after shipping/customs charges), but then I was thinking of adding a headphone amp to the D18 eventually for my custom IEMs and seeing if I could spot the difference between the regular toslink out of my Mac versus a s/pdif converter and the D2 also has the U2 pretty much built inside it so you can just go straight up USB.
 
Just wonder how well that volume control would work with my monitors... wait, why am I convincing myself to get something twice the price of what I just had to send back. Honestly. Head-Fi...

 

[realmassy]

I'd upgrade speakers instead

 

[Somnambulist]

I plan on eventually moving from my Focals to Event Opals for my desktop set up. Currently building Linkwitz Plutos which I may use with this as well.

 

[kingoftown1]

Alright, I've had my D18 for about a day now.  I've been having issues with dropouts, and previously thought it was my computer running short on available ram with my million other processes running, but I just moved my O2 (which runs cooler than a winter breeze) off the top of the DAC and everything seems to be fine now.  I guess my question is, is it common for the D18 to run warm?  Has anyone else had this problem at all?

Otherwise it's sounding great though.  The improvement in soundstage, detail, separation, bass extension, and just about everything else is a clear step up from the Audinst.  Now excuse this terrible segue, but project86--I see you have the HUD-mx1 listed on your profile.  Have you tried using it as an SPDIF converter for the Yulong and compared it to other converters or even just the coax from your music server?  I'm wondering if that's a part of my setup I should be looking to upgrade, as I'd like to get the absolute most from the D18.
 
 
 
Edit:  my drop outs are back--anyone have any suggestions?  I've messed around with my output buffer, but it's not changing anything.
Edit2:  emailed Grant Fidelity and got responses from both Rachel & Ian in less than an hour (impressive!).  Seems like the problem is probably with the optical connection...I'll be looking to move on to a coax usb-spdif converter soon to see if that fixes everything.

 

[Somnambulist]

I had drop outs via optical too, although they didn't happen until just before I was going to send it back because of the transformer hum. Didn't have a converter to try USB.

 

[project86]

Quote:

I plan on eventually moving from my Focals to Event Opals for my desktop set up. Currently building Linkwitz Plutos which I may use with this as well.

Oooh, Plutos! Wish I had time to build some of those. The Orions are the best speakers I've ever heard, and Siegfried says the Plutos are surprisingly similar in smaller rooms. 
 

 
Quote:

Alright, I've had my D18 for about a day now.  I've been having issues with dropouts, and previously thought it was my computer running short on available ram with my million other processes running, but I just moved my O2 (which runs cooler than a winter breeze) off the top of the DAC and everything seems to be fine now.  I guess my question is, is it common for the D18 to run warm?  Has anyone else had this problem at all?

Otherwise it's sounding great though.  The improvement in soundstage, detail, separation, bass extension, and just about everything else is a clear step up from the Audinst.  Now excuse this terrible segue, but project86--I see you have the HUD-mx1 listed on your profile.  Have you tried using it as an SPDIF converter for the Yulong and compared it to other converters or even just the coax from your music server?  I'm wondering if that's a part of my setup I should be looking to upgrade, as I'd like to get the absolute most from the D18.
 
 
 
Edit:  my drop outs are back--anyone have any suggestions?  I've messed around with my output buffer, but it's not changing anything.
Edit2:  emailed Grant Fidelity and got responses from both Rachel & Ian in less than an hour (impressive!).  Seems like the problem is probably with the optical connection...I'll be looking to move on to a coax usb-spdif converter soon to see if that fixes everything.

Weird. Mine doesn't run hot at all. Maybe slightly warmer than it would be if turned off, but that's about it. I wonder if there is some type of interference from the O2 causing the issue? I've had instances where stacking components caused hum, static, or random noise, though never had interference cause signal to be lost. 
 
I generally don't use optical much - my main source doesn't even have it, and all my other sources have the choice of optical or coaxial SPDIF. Obviously your Audinst doesn't give you that choice. Maybe it is a good thing though.....
 
Functionally, I like the option of the Audinst as far as using it for USB-SPDIF duty. But honestly it is probably not a very good converter compared to the dedicated units out there running Asynchronously. See THIS LINK  from the Audiophilleo website, admittedly a competing company but still. Check out the Stello, Lindemann, and Kingrex converters. They have pretty poor jitter specs. I can't imagine that the Audinst is any better than those, especially considering the conversion to toslink is not even its main function. It's not terrible - plenty of older high end CD transports had similar jitter specs. But it isn't great either. Yes, the ESS DAC in the D18 should be good at dealing with jitter, but feeding a quality signal is always a good thing.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[Somnambulist]

There's three of us (me, a friend and his friend who is an electronics whizz) making the Pluto 2.1s. I made a thread in the DIY section, although we're currently kinda not doing much as the 3rd guy is doing all 6 boards. The plan in my case is to have them hooked up to either a home theater pre/pro, something like the Marantz AV7005, or a home theater receiver with excellent sound quality, and obviously the Plutos can be connected to the stereo pre-outs. I can then listen in 2.0, but I am probably going to get dual subwoofers and also run it in 2.2 for stuff that is a little busier in the bottom octave.
 
I will get the Orions + Thors one day, just need a bigger house and more money.
 
Quote:

Oooh, Plutos! Wish I had time to build some of those. The Orions are the best speakers I've ever heard, and Siegfried says the Plutos are surprisingly similar in smaller rooms. 

In terms of DACs, the Audiolab M-DAC seems like a good option in a way - Sabre-based, easily available in the UK and only £100 more than the D18, but I'm not completely sold for some reason. I think it was one really negative review on here lol. There's something about the Anedio as a complete all-in-one (perfectly good amp for custom IEMs, has the USB to s/pdif thingy built in) and it being relatively pure in function compared to the Audiolab, which has all these buttons and filters and stuff I'd probably not want to use. The V800 has good availability to but I want this next to my Mac and it doesn't do much for me aesthetically (I know, right). There's probably other things out there I need to look at... but I wish there was a EU Anedio dealer!

 

[rahds]

I almost daren't tempt fate by typing this but...I'm in the UK (Nottingham) and my Yulong is neither warm, drop-outy or buzzing. I've probably only used it for around 40 hours (and left it on for 40 more) but so far all's well. I mostly use the SPDIF (from a CD player/transport) but the optical (from an iPod dock) seems to work perfectly too. I wonder if electricity providers are contracted to supply a certain voltage? I've not touched the unit, other than plugging it in and plugging in the SPDIF and the optical. I use the balanced outputs. I looked at the Audiolab M-DAC too but, at risk of sounding ridiculous I thought 'If Audiolab can provide all these extras, and sell it in the High Street, for 20ish% more than the Yulong costs direct from China, then the Yulong is probably 'worth' twice as much. That said I've not (even) heard the Audiolab.

 

[Somnambulist]

That was my thinking too (about the Audiolab).
 
I'm a bit annoyed that you've said that lol, I just wanted mine to work and that it seems to be specific to my area (London, I mean c'mon, capital and all that, shouldn't be funky with the old electricity right?). The real bugger though is why the bloody thing buzzed away when the D100 was rock solid, stable and buzz free. Dreading ordering something else now. I'll pass this onto the seller and onto Yulong though. Perhaps the D18 is just more sensitive to voltage changes than the D100, and should be more 230-240V than 220-230V? I don't know much difference 10V makes.
 
EDIT - as the guy said though, Yulong are looking into it, so in future I'm sure if I bought a D18 again it would be fine. It did sound awesome as long as music was playing, but any quiet passages etc and I even if I couldn't hear the buzz, since I knew it was there I was listening for it. I can't wait though, need a DAC!