…anyone with kids can relate for sure.
I require advice… I feel like I have found my can that I want to build a system around, HEkse. I have read the Shit List and understand where I’d be headed if I were to be building a system from scratch. However, I have had my primary DAC for a while and have been happy with it (Gungnir A2 MB). It’s punchy, has decent timber and stages well.
I am struggling with amps. I have had a Kinki THR-1 for a while and that was great, but I wanted more. I went to a Burson 3XP, but with the stock op amps it felt like a downgrade; then with Orange op amps, a side grade.
I’m now looking at buying a MJ3 as my endgame. However, although I think it may pair well with my HEkse, I am unsure of DAC synergy.
My questions are this:
Will a MJ3 pair well with my HEkse and Gung?
Is there another amp (I am U.K.-based, £1500 max to spend) that’d suit my existing headphone and DAC better than an MJ3?
Or should I forget my DAC and start from scratch with my chain? Sell the Gung and get a new DAC and amp?
If it helps, I listen to most kinds of music, but primarily, I listen to modern, heavy music (Plini, Haken, Sikth). I am a drummer and so good holography and macrodynamics seem to please me most.
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Gungnir A2 MB with Violectric V222 was the most macrodynamic fun I ever had, everything sounded big and hit hard and the drivers kept slamming constantly.
I wish I didn’t return the Gungnir to upgrade to Yggy but its gone now. Since you are in UK give it a try from Thomann (Germany) Violectric HPA V222 – Thomann UK and if you don’t like it its easier to return (you have 30days).
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Is there a reason why a DAC configured to support multi voltage (115/230) would perform worse than if it was only one of them and potentially optimized to that specific voltage? There are a few manufacturers that do support it - Lampizator even with their Horizon, CH Precision 1.2 series, and “lower end” stuff like Meitner MA3 but examples like Wavedream, EMM DV2, Totaldac, and Playback Designs don’t.
Electrically not really, what’s usually done is the primary on the transformer is split into two coils and either they are wired in parallel or series, sometimes with a switch.
You do need to find a transformer wound with 2 primaries, that tends to be more expensive.
Could there be a difference possibly, you might be able to wind a transformer designed specifically for 115V with larger gauge wire in the same space, which would change its inductance, which might make a difference.
I will note that the fact that most transformers are 115V, and nowhere in the US is running 115, everything swapped to 120 in 1967, and they still wind transformers for 110 and 115.
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Im getting the “pop” sounds still from the matrix xspdif and its definitely a problem with my laptop, my chain runs perfectly on my other (work only) w11 laptop and on a w10 one and on my phone. They al run fine except for my main laptop which is the one I really use.
For 2 weeks I been trying everything I could think of, most suggestions would probably be already tested thoroughly. I know a bit about computers
I contacted power holdings/matrix we pretty much reached the conclusion that it was my laptop with a software or driver problem but moving anything of that sort didnt matter.
I have the most powerful laptop processor intel has for the 13th gen laptops which is the i9 13980hx and I noticed it was giving way too little power to tidal, so I got a software that got through asus power control to get a base 4ghz of power instead of 2ghz in average of all cores and that helped out massively.
Increasing the power given to the apps definitely improved things because its like windows didnt want to give anything more than .02ghz of cpu power while my work w11 laptop gave tidal a minimum of .2ghz of cpu power.
Now I got it to a point where I eliminated the distorsion noises and crackles from tidal on my pc (not the company’s), and the pop noises were massively reduced in both foobar and in tidal.
Im getting like only 1 not very loud pop every like five songs in both apps which I can pretty much ignore easily
But should I conform, shouldnt I have perfect playback? As I said I tried every method I could find in the book and tested every possible configuration available.
The only solution left I can think of is factory reseting the laptop/formatting but it would be a pain in the ass getting everything the way I have it right now. The pop sounds really arent that loud they hadnt ruined any song for me yet (in contrast to the noises I got before that totally killed the song and mood).
I really dont know what to do. I believe I ran out of methods to try other than formatting which is what im trying to avoid.
Interesting that you’re hearing these differences between PCs.
What are your thoughts about using a dedicated music server (instead of digital playback on a commercial PC)? The design goals for commercial PC vs music servers are so different – the former is to maximize computations/sec within physical limits, while the latter is to provide consistently low noise streaming which does not need much computations. Even the ones that are PC-based are very deliberate in heavily modified OS that are stripped barebones, no other processes running, with often slower but less noisy ram/CPU/networking (many limit to 100mbps), customized PSUs, etc. One company even touts wider board traces to minimize noise.
Years ago I used to use my PC w/ Foobar+FLAC into a dac (Red Wine Audio Bellina). No dedicated audio streaming card or anything fancy. I changed dacs (Vinne Rossi LIO + L2 DAC) and then had a compatibility issue with the USB’s 5V, so in desperation I bought a used Aurender N100H ($1500?) and copied those FLAC files over. The sound quality improvement was HUGE.
If you are having software interference that results in audible artifacts, that’s probably pretty substantial. Just my opinion but even if you get rid of the clicks, you’re still hearing a lot of underlying noise compared to a dedicated streamer…
Just my $0.0001.
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That would be problematic as I do use my pc as my only source of music by usb, it makes things simpler
The modem is shared and theres a router, both of them are bad and I would need a rather long ethernet cable plus drilling a hole in my roof to reach the modem. Then often the modems signal just drops, theres a router nearby that one also drops its signal from time to time.
Plus I already spent $800 on the matrix xspdif3 + LPS and also got a nice AES and USB for it. It started failing a week after the amazon return time ended. (My laptop not the ddc).
I know that network is the best way to go but currently im in a situation with difficulties plus I dont even like roon it glitches out japanese and chinese music. I dont know if I could connect foobar to the streamer.
Plus good streamers are expensive, you get what you pay for.
Right now im out of budget and space for any good streamer plus the building shares the modem and router situation.
Thanks for your 2 cents. Also I think the ddc sounds very very good, in other laptops the playback is perfect, just in my laptop that it makes “pop” sounds and thats the only one it does its not a bit below the instruments volume.
There were artifacts, distorsions, noises, and cracklings before but I reduced all that to aproximately 1 quiet pop every 4 or 5 songs after a ton of tweeking.
Sounds typical for a laptop/pc use case. I had issues with mine too and just added a little Pi thingy and was done with it on my desktop. 
good luck buddy!
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Such a shame it works perfect in every other device ever that isnt my laptop.
Imma emulate windows 11 to see if it helps then maybe ill decide to format the pc but im not sure.
I assume you tried just setting the power management plan to High performance, your laptop will run hot and eat the battery, but that should at least eliminate any power settings.
If that doesn’t resolve it, it’s got to be something installed conflicting.
If I had to guess it’s most likely the Disk/Ethernet (if your streaming) or USB suspending. CPU shouldn’t really be an issue, all it’s doing is copying bytes from one buffer to another if the driver is good, it might not even be using the CPU for that.
There can be an issue with some aggressive power management on the CPU with bursty CPU loads, but modern CPUS can shift power state so fast it really shouldn’t be an issue.
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It is something installed my best guess, windows or asus set up 2 “fastest” power modes, high performance and turbo mode they are basically the same.
I used intel xtu (to undervolt and offset cores and cache) and throttlestop to make the base speed 4ghz instead of 2ghz the “performance and turbo modes” used, it can run at 4ghz all day withouth throttling, the cooling system on this laptop is way too good.
After doing that tidal was almost completely fixed before that it had all kinds of noises.
Im using only a DDC not a streamer, me and the people I asked we all thought the cpu usage wasnt an issue at all, but theres a massive improvement on both tidal and foobar when I upped the base speed.
In this case the cpu kinda doesnt give a damn about tidal, before increasing the base clock it fed tidal with only .02ghz (all 32 logic processors averaged). The other laptops feed it with .2ghz at minimum and when theres a spike that needs more power (changing songs, random spikes) the other laptops fed up to 1.6ghz to tidal, while my own laptop never put over .35ghz in the largest spike. (Again this is the average of all processors applied to tidal only, not to any other stuff).
So yeah when I changed the base speed of the cpu (because asus/windows didnt let me put any app in high priority cpu mode with other software) everything foobar and tidal is running way better and the numbers it sends to tidal now are more like the other laptops, way more cpu power used.
Still because its not perfect yet there must be a conflict I just cant find. The laptop included all kind of trashware I cleaned up as much as I could and still windows has a lot of audio settings (and drivers) that the other pcs dont.
Theres reports that the triple windows update of the 23th fd up a lot of windows 11 audio players. Thats about when mine started to fail.
But I went back with a restore point before those updates, same result. Also the other w11 laptop has the latest drivers and no issues.
Thats a legendary name lol wasnt it red wine audio isabellina lol name
You don’t have to do this permanently. Get a new clean drive, install Windows from scratch, clean, new drivers and just check to see if the issue goes away. You can put your old HD back afterwards but that will tell you for certain if you were to start from scratch if your problem would be resolved or not. There’s always a hardware issue with your laptop that could be at fault. I’m assuming you’ve tried different USB outputs etc.
You need to rule out if it’s an OS thing or a HW thing as doing what I’m suggesting would at leave give you a definitive answer to that.
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Well i was going to do that but without the handy work
I am going to emulate windows 11 with clean drivers on virtualbox or whatever is used these days for virtual machine
Im not sure if the result is the exact same as doing it physically, this wouldnt really diagnose the ssd but I dont currently have a spare ssd or hdd but at least I should rule out the software first.
The virtual machine should be fully clean driver and software wise so I that I can rule that out while I get a physical.
Anyway against all odds im actually enjoying the system as is, when I powered up the cpu it really fixed 95% of the problems, the pops are like 1 pop every 5 songs and are a lot quieter than I expected not audible on loud passages they dont have that distorted loud texture they used to, its really just like an extra drum note instead of a pop corn popping.
As things are now I prefer how the chain sounds with the matrix than without it, it is an upgrade to the chain. I have been listening for about 3 hours now i have only heard like 4 pops and they arent aggressive like before.
Is very weird that windows is managing the power wrong (is it though?) but for now its good enough so I can calmly fix things and use my players without getting any songs ruined by noises. Im definitely not stressed by this anymore with the results I achieved yesterday. I have time now without being left musicless (yeah my laptop is my only source not very audiophile of me)
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Doble post time
Is it bad that my iec connector is directly touching the transformer?
I can already tell its not optimal because the iec connector is already scratched from doing this, but the cable wasnt that expensive id rather use it
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Are you using the matrix with USB Bus power or do you have an AC adapter like an ifi plugged in?
I have the ifi SMPS and it works well. The Matrix says it only need 0.4A so either of the ifi low-noise 12V supplies will work.
Outside the damage to the connector it’s likely harmless.
Transformers do vibrate though to varying degrees, so there is a small chance you might get some audible noise from the contact. But I wouldn’t worry about it unless you hear it.
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I have the ifi elite, I tested both with and without it. Like I said its my laptop that has some sort of glitch or error. Every other device works perfectly and every component in my chain was tested individually. The 2 weeks of troubleshooting I did were extremely thorough.
Im taking a break now that it mostly works but I want perfection, I think the virtual machine test will give me valuable info.
Well the damage is only aestheticc and I wont sell the cable ever, even if I upgrade it would make a great replacement.
Thanks for the info, this transformer does not vibrate as long as the screws are very tight, but the vibration naturally untightens them over time so just a quick adjust if it vibrates. When it vibrates its audible af.
Don’t know if you’re able to turn that AC input connector 180 degrees but it would resolve your issue. I’ve got the same problem with my BHC and just thought about the “solution” looking at your pic and confirmed on my BHC that it’s not too heavy a lift to fix via flipping.
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Ill check when I get home
@dB_Cooper yep it can be done but im so lazy just need to extend every cable so they reach their new destination, why didnt they do that by default im too lazy to DIY
Its like 2 cables in total I should eventually do it lol
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