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Post by Gary Cook on May 28, 2013 2:05:37 GMT -5
Already tried that. Also without the battery to see. No change in either. So it won't be a ground loop via the laptop? Cheers Gary |
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Post by garbulky on May 28, 2013 2:10:41 GMT -5
That's could be true. I don't know what to call it. But here's where I discovered it. I have a behringer UCA 202 which is both a DAC and a ADC (analog line in) . Without anything connected to the line in (and also with) I experienced what is best described as a fluctuating chirping like distortion with a little hiss like there was some sort of wave piggybacking on the signal. This was with just the battery connected to the laptop. Also tried without the battery. Same thing. I used a sennheisser HD600 to monitor it.
However connected to my desktop the Behringer was super silent. No discernable noise, not even when analysed on audacity.
So I don't know what it is exactly but there is something coming from my laptop.
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Post by danny01 on May 29, 2013 4:21:59 GMT -5
Have you tried the hifimediy ess9023? Looks like a killer $40 ebay dac, especially if you want to carry it around attached to a laptop or Android phone/tablet with some IEM's. I wonder how it would compare to the UC202.
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Post by garbulky on May 29, 2013 4:29:34 GMT -5
Have you tried the hifimediy ess9023? Looks like a killer $40 ebay dac, especially if you want to carry it around attached to a laptop or Android phone/tablet with some IEM's. I wonder how it would compare to the UC202. Oooh. looks interesting. Which exact one are you referring to on ebay? I've found multiple variants. I'm cleaned out at the moment but maybe someday.... |
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Post by GreenKiwi on May 29, 2013 11:05:03 GMT -5
You might try it on a powered USB hub.
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Post by Boomzilla on Jun 1, 2013 15:05:42 GMT -5
...a fluctuating chirping like distortion with a little hiss like there was some sort of wave piggybacking on the signal. This was...connected to the laptop. Also tried without the battery. Same thing. I used a sennheisser HD600 to monitor it. However connected to my desktop the Behringer was super silent... Bad capacitor in the laptop? |
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Post by garbulky on Jun 1, 2013 15:45:18 GMT -5
...a fluctuating chirping like distortion with a little hiss like there was some sort of wave piggybacking on the signal. This was...connected to the laptop. Also tried without the battery. Same thing. I used a sennheisser HD600 to monitor it. However connected to my desktop the Behringer was super silent... Bad capacitor in the laptop? I have no idea. But FWIW, my previous Dell laptop exhibited the same thing (without even the power connected). |
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Post by Boomzilla on Jun 1, 2013 19:47:19 GMT -5
...FWIW, my previous Dell laptop exhibited the same thing (without even the power connected). Well, that probably kills the "bad cap" theory. Maybe something about how laptops handle USB grounding vs. how desktops do (but I'm guessing). Did plugging in the powered USB hub help? Boomzilla |
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Post by garbulky on Jun 1, 2013 20:44:20 GMT -5
Interesting you said that. Yes it did help. Sort of. The distortion reduced slightly but it changed types too. Very similar distortion but different sounding, hard to describe.
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Post by Boomzilla on Jun 2, 2013 0:56:23 GMT -5
Have you asked Behringer? They probably have encountered this before with other customers. Also, did Lonnie have any ideas? Finally, I'm wondering if the 6dB attenuators (which caused hum in my system) might have the opposite effect on yours by decoupling the ground planes of the various components.
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Post by garbulky on Jun 2, 2013 3:49:50 GMT -5
Have you asked Behringer? They probably have encountered this before with other customers. Also, did Lonnie have any ideas? Finally, I'm wondering if the 6dB attenuators (which caused hum in my system) might have the opposite effect on yours by decoupling the ground planes of the various components. Keith talked about a ground loop isolator for the USB port. Which sounds like it would do great but it is $40 which I can't spend at this moment as it already works on the desktop PC without noise. |
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Post by garbulky on Jun 6, 2013 22:25:39 GMT -5
A visit to boomzilla's!! My wife and I were invited to listen to Mr and Mrs boomzilla's house today. And we had a great time there. As you all know he's a really nice guy who is very passionate about audio and his wife was wonderful company. They also had a gorgeous house.  So onto the details. Honestly, I feel that it's hard to give a review of his system as his review of my system and comparisons are pretty much what I would have said was I that articulate and I find it tough to better that review. A brief overview. He has Klipsch cornwalls, A deftech studiomonitor 65, a usp-1, an xda-1, an xpa-2 and a jolida tube dac all connected to an airport express run off an invisible genie of some sort in another dimension. It is all controlled by an ipad. He also has a lot of other goodies that I didn't get to check out so I'll just leave that out. So onto the look and feel of things. The living room is nice and large and very nice looking. Just exactly the kind of space that I would want! The Ipad remote control is just amazing. It is compact, full color and easy to navigate with a large screen. PERFECT. The USP-1 was a lot more imposing and solid than it looks in the pictures. There's no getting around that it is a serious piece of work. And I like it. I can't even imagine how big the xsp-1 must be! The Cornwalls, some may have seen his pictures but what they don't show you is that they are in great condition, have a GORGEOUS finish to it and are much larger than you would expect. They are more than twice as wide as my axiom m80 towers. I have not seen a finish like that on speakers and it's obvious attention was paid to them. He also has some nice absorption panels which undoubtedly helped the sound. The cornwalls were very different from my system. They had a more relaxed feel to them and since they were closer together when accounting for distance the soundstage was slightly smaller simply due to placement. It was obvious listening to them that he knew what he wanted out of his sound and knew how to achieve it. It had a warm and pleasing image coming from between the speakers and voices sounded good to my ears. Also due to his larger area and distance from the speakers instruments were able to project foward in specific space so you can easily tell which instrument was placed before which. That was impressive to me. The cornwalls were also able to be played at much lower volumes and still have the details come through where you don't feel like maybe one should turn them up some. The horns played very differently from what I imagined horn speakers to play like. I expected a loud, brash and right in your ears (sort of a pleasing rock sound). This was pretty much the opposite of what I experienced. The treble behaved well staying within the soundstage without unnaturally jumping out at you. The cornwalls were also idling a lot as it was obvious that they could probably bring the roof down. So it's possible that I didn't experience their full capabilities. But what I heard was nice to the ear. Though they didn't have as much depth behind the speaker, I believe they made up for with depth in front of the speaker which is something my speaker/living room does not do. Overall the way I could describe his system is well I honestly don't know as they were so different from mine! It usually takes me a long time experiencing a speaker to accurately describe it. But they were nice . Their area of focus appeared to be definitely in the important mid-range. Thoughtful would be a word I guess to describe the sound. Onto the def techs. The deftechs are certainly more similar to my speakers in sound signature. He angled them outwards and I was instantly skeptical.  I instantly thought the center image would be lost especially in terms of treble. But man, he was right about the outward angle. It had a more omnidirectional and wider soundstage with more treble extension than the cornwalls. Just like the cornwalls sounds were able to come from outside the actual speaker. It also had surprising bass for a bookshelf speaker. I kept forgetting that it was them playing in a large room and not the cornwalls. The bass IMO was better behaved than the cornwalls but also a different sound signature so it's really hard to say who is the winner there. They had phase plugs on them and an interesting bass radiator on the top. I feel that the cornwalls would be easier to listen to for longer periods of time and at lower volumes than the def techs. It was hard for me to hear a difference between the Jolida dac and the xda-1. I was also surprised to hear no "tube" sound signature. But it was likely because I was listening in an unfamiliar environment with different equipment than mine. I'm a firm believer that it takes time and familiarity to hear subtle differences and IMO this illustrates the point. The Jolida looked GORGEOUS. His setup was very clean looking and aesthetically pleasing. I also got some really cool goodies to try out! So I'm excited about that. So thank you very much for the lovely couple that had us over and treated us to a fantastic suishi meal! His wife even gave my wife a most interesting flower, one that I had never seen before. Thanks again!! In other news: after troubleshooting my DAC distortion issue at 80 volume, we came to the conclusion that my XDA-1 is faulty in some way. We switched out everything. Passive pre-amps, pre-amplifiers, amplifiers, power cords, even two identical XDA-1's and the tube DAC. And yes, my specific XDA-1 - not his - is faulty. |
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Post by garbulky on Jun 8, 2013 1:39:12 GMT -5
Having experienced my new friend's audio setup and excellent interface from the ipad, I realized what my setup was sorely missing. An easy to use interface!
I found this app called monkeymote for foobar for 2 bucks (+$1 for streaming audio capabilities).
It has a similar interface to the ipad and I can use it on the the ipod touch. It works pretty well. It's only problem is that it has a problem figuiring out all the artists in a music playlist but the search function works great. Other critics is that the scroll for the playlist with a large amount of files takes time. I would have really liked the option to grab a scroll bar to scroll faster.
A cool thing is that it can stream my audio direct to my ipod which can be used with a dock or a second amp which will allow me to teach lessons in a second room without having to spend money on storage/second computer etc. It also doesn't play through the DAC when it does so so there's no double playing going on there.
Other issues is that it works with ios 4.3 and later. Well luck have it my spare ipod tops out at 4.2 and won't go higher so I have to use my primary device. I don't like this planned obsolete-ness that apple appears to knowingly shove into their products. There is no reason my old ipod touch can't actually use the same darn program. The app store needs to have an option to allow download of older app versions for older.
Also if I turn off the screen by pressing the sleep button, it disconnects from the foobar server and requires several button presses (like slide to unlock screen, connect to to server screen) to get back. Which is a pity as the screen drains the battery on the ipod.
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Post by garbulky on Jun 10, 2013 15:28:13 GMT -5
Cable experiments with passive pre-amps!
As some of you know I've been using a passive pre-amp. A really nice diy unit. It happens to have a 150 k ohm passive attenuator on it so a bit on the high side but I thought I'd mention it.
Anyway, I experimented with some cables - all stock non-expensive stuff.
I've found 1-2 meter wires gives me sound with powerful bass and dynamics. However the sound appears harsh, bloated a little overpowering, and a little veiled. It feels rough to my ears. Not very "transparent".
4 meter RCA wires gives me a reduction in bass extension and dynamics but a more delicate feel to the music. The ability to identify instruments and placement is significantly better. Sort of like I got a new DAC feel. I imagine that the legnth lets less of the bass energy through acting as a sort of eq due to resistance. Anyway, it feels like an upgrade to the sound to my ears (and my wife's). I will see if boomzilla thinks so too if he drops by sometime. He heard the 4 meter wire and he described the sound as "delicate" as well without me mentioning it. He hasn't heard the wires with less length.
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Post by garbulky on Jun 15, 2013 9:57:04 GMT -5
I've had issues with the speed of my old celeron desktop pc. It is simply too slow for videos. It can record a few tracks of audio at the same time but it's obvious that it just doesn't quite have the horse power.
I found a gentleman willing to sell an old processor+motherboard system that he wasn't using which is an athlon FX along with a bit of RAM for a good price.
Since it doesn't come with a an OS I have to figure something out as well as looking for an extra two gigs of ddr2 to allow it to run an OS smoothly. I may have an old vista and key cd somewhere but I would have loved to do windows 7. Hopefully it will work out okay. It may even have enough horsepower for some games as I have a decent old graphics card that's been sitting around waiting for a PC. It's a leap for me in this economy, let's hope it works out.
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Post by Boomzilla on Jun 16, 2013 8:06:40 GMT -5
Did you try putting the attenuators BETWEEN two pairs of interconnects rather than have them on the source or amplifier ends? Also, have you tried the -3 and -6 dB attenuators yet?
Next time we meet, I'll loan you my USP-1; see what you make of the preamp in your system.
Assuming that I'll be making some new passive attenuators soon, what pot setting should we try - 5K, 10K, 15K, or 20K?
Also, I'll be using some better input jacks for the newer ones. Anyone else on the Lounge interested in having a passive preamp? If I'm making one, there's no extra effort to make a half dozen. Assuming I can find some ganged attenuators, there's no reason we couldn't make some fully-balanced passive preamps as well. I'll need to consult with CFElliott or DYohn to see, but I'm suspecting that any attenuation on the + signal would need to exactly match an equal attenuation on the - signal, and both need to be equally referenced to the ground. With unbalanced circuits, the output signal is completely shorted to ground when the attenuator is at its minimum position. Is this the case with balanced circuitry as well?
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Post by garbulky on Jun 23, 2013 15:39:38 GMT -5
Did you try putting the attenuators BETWEEN two pairs of interconnects rather than have them on the source or amplifier ends? Also, have you tried the -3 and -6 dB attenuators yet? Next time we meet, I'll loan you my USP-1; see what you make of the preamp in your system. Assuming that I'll be making some new passive attenuators soon, what pot setting should we try - 5K, 10K, 15K, or 20K? Also, I'll be using some better input jacks for the newer ones. Anyone else on the Lounge interested in having a passive preamp? If I'm making one, there's no extra effort to make a half dozen. Assuming I can find some ganged attenuators, there's no reason we couldn't make some fully-balanced passive preamps as well. I'll need to consult with CFElliott or DYohn to see, but I'm suspecting that any attenuation on the + signal would need to exactly match an equal attenuation on the - signal, and both need to be equally referenced to the ground. With unbalanced circuits, the output signal is completely shorted to ground when the attenuator is at its minimum position. Is this the case with balanced circuitry as well? I just got back from my long trip. There were some bad complications with an in lawending up in the ER on the way. So we are trying to recover from a very long journey. I haven't been able to try anything out with the attenuators. But I have tried them between interconnects but never on the amp end input. A new passive pre-amp sounds really good! I'm loving the switching capabilities on mine but maybe a purist one with a straight signal path would be great. A fully balanced design may be incredible! Too bad I don't have a balanced amp. I'm not sure if they have schematics but luminous audios pre-amps have recieved some serious accolades. They have a fully balanced design too. There is a chance they may have the schematics for it. They may email you some if you call and ask. www.luminousaudio.com/axiom2.html |
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Post by Boomzilla on Jun 23, 2013 17:03:23 GMT -5
Glad you're back safely. Sounds like it could have been a better trip!
Next time we get together, I'll loan you the Jolida DAC to try out. I think you'll REALLY like it.
I'm also going to put the Rogue audio tube integrated amp back in the system driving the Definitive Technology speakers. The tubes are too warm with the Klipsch Cornwalls, but I think they might be a good match for the DefTechs.
Sooner or later, I'd like to hear the Rogue tube amp with your M80's.
Hi to your better half - Boomzilla
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Post by garbulky on Jun 23, 2013 17:07:34 GMT -5
Glad you're back safely. Sounds like it could have been a better trip! Next time we get together, I'll loan you the Jolida DAC to try out. I think you'll REALLY like it. I'm also going to put the Rogue audio tube integrated amp back in the system driving the Definitive Technology speakers. The tubes are too warm with the Klipsch Cornwalls, but I think they might be a good match for the DefTechs. Sooner or later, I'd like to hear the Rogue tube amp with your M80's. Hi to your better half - Boomzilla I am very excited about everything you just said!!! Wow tube sound with my m80's. I wonder how that would work?! Thanks for the oppurtunity! My axioms are reasonably efficient. I believe they are like 90-92 db per watt meter. My better half says hi back. |
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Post by garbulky on Jul 8, 2013 12:56:30 GMT -5
Well I found a bluegrass CD that doesn't sound like it was mastered for a transistor radio....
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I instantly thought the center image would be lost especially in terms of treble. But man, he was right about the outward angle. It had a more omnidirectional and wider soundstage with more treble extension than the cornwalls. Just like the cornwalls sounds were able to come from outside the actual speaker. It also had surprising bass for a bookshelf speaker. I kept forgetting that it was them playing in a large room and not the cornwalls. The bass IMO was better behaved than the cornwalls but also a different sound signature so it's really hard to say who is the winner there. 