Post by h4x on Aug 19, 2016 16:19:19 GMT -5
I was excited to see the Little Ego on closeout sale, as it feels like a great price to get a better-than-built-in DAC. I grabbed one from the site and immediately hooked it up to my Emotiva 4s monitors from my Mac Pro.
I found myself disappointed. The built in line out on the Mac Pro had sounded better, I was sure. Switching between the two, I heard unmistakable distortion across the frequency range on the Little Ego. I used both Decibel and Tidal in exclusive mode, used Audio MIDI Setup to ensure that the Ego's sample rate was matching my content. I thought perhaps using headphone instead of line out levels was to blame, and tried lowering the analog volume, with no change in noticeable distortion. I hooked it up to my new Emotiva T1 tower speakers with a Dayton Audio DTA-1 amp, and had the same problem.
Finally I Googled around and came across this post on Head-Fi by Luckbad. Because I'd never bothered to try the filter change button, I didn't realize the device was in Headphone Blend Mode. Headphone Blend Mode adds some audio from each channel to each other channel, in doing so, it can cause distortion. Putting it in any of the other filter modes fixed my distortion problem completely.
Alternatively, with Headphone Blend Mode enabled, using each audio application's digital volume feature allowed me to reduce the application's volume enough to where the blended result was not distorted. This of course runs counter to the manual's advice to "leave your player program’s Volume Control set to 100% and use the computer’s System Volume Control to adjust your audio level." Their advice makes sense as applications tend to sport subpar digital volume effects.
tldr: don't use Headphone Blend Mode unless you actually want it and your digital output signal is quieted a bit.
I found myself disappointed. The built in line out on the Mac Pro had sounded better, I was sure. Switching between the two, I heard unmistakable distortion across the frequency range on the Little Ego. I used both Decibel and Tidal in exclusive mode, used Audio MIDI Setup to ensure that the Ego's sample rate was matching my content. I thought perhaps using headphone instead of line out levels was to blame, and tried lowering the analog volume, with no change in noticeable distortion. I hooked it up to my new Emotiva T1 tower speakers with a Dayton Audio DTA-1 amp, and had the same problem.
Finally I Googled around and came across this post on Head-Fi by Luckbad. Because I'd never bothered to try the filter change button, I didn't realize the device was in Headphone Blend Mode. Headphone Blend Mode adds some audio from each channel to each other channel, in doing so, it can cause distortion. Putting it in any of the other filter modes fixed my distortion problem completely.
Alternatively, with Headphone Blend Mode enabled, using each audio application's digital volume feature allowed me to reduce the application's volume enough to where the blended result was not distorted. This of course runs counter to the manual's advice to "leave your player program’s Volume Control set to 100% and use the computer’s System Volume Control to adjust your audio level." Their advice makes sense as applications tend to sport subpar digital volume effects.
tldr: don't use Headphone Blend Mode unless you actually want it and your digital output signal is quieted a bit.