New DAC in the house...

[Jim R.]

Tom,

Sorry to hear that.  I've not had any problems and I've not heard of any others, so hopefully this is just a fluke.

I've been doing a lot of headphone listening the past 3 or 4 days with the iFi usb power box, dac and headphone amp -- all fed by my ipad mini with a camera connection kit, and even at this early stage I'm pretty impressed, especially given that it is all SS and I'm only listening to 320 kbps MOG streams over wifi.

This week I'm concentrating on getting my ripped and downloaded music collection all integrated and loaded on the NAS and the stand alone drives for two systems, and the backup drives, and then I should have a whole lot more music choices at my fingertips.

Hope you get the dac back soon.

-- Jim

[denti alligator]

Jim,
any more impressions of the DAC? I have to admit you've peaked my interest a lot. I only wish I could demo one.

[Natural Sound]

UPDATE: After just 4 listening sessions the MyDac I'd dead. The digital stream appears to be flowing but there is no audio. I put the original 16 bit NOS DAC back in place and my music is flowing again. The MyDac will be going back on an RMA tomorrow.

UPDATE #2: I got a replacement MyDac and it doesn

[Jim R.]

Tom,

I'm sure this isn't news to you, but sometimes the new ALSA versions can behave differently with a given dac.  Did you check with Micromega or the Voyage folks?  They're usually right on top of these things.

Sorry it's been so frustrating, but this why I don't normally recommend a linux server to people who don't know their way around linux config and troubleshooting -- still not really ready for prime time IMO.

And I'm not talking about you here -- you know what you're doing.

[Natural Sound]

Jim,

I slept on it and with a little help from the guys at Voyage I figured it out. Somehow, don

[Jim R.]

Tom,

Oh, I know how frustrating that stuff can be as well.  I honestly figured it was something with the ALSA config as that is where 95% of the problems people have with linux servers end up being solved -- at least in my experience.  But you're right, why it should just change is not normal behavior.  I'm glad you got it figured out.  Do you suppose the first dac was okthen?

Yeah man, get those Orcas playing as soon as you can!

I had hoped to get things going yesterday but we had a couple of pet issues and dinner guests last night and the whole day disappeard right in front of us.  Doggie is in the hospital after eating some gum with Xylatol in it, but is doing fine as we unbelieveably caught it in time, and she'll probably come home sometime today or tomorrow morning.  Oh well, today is another day. :-)

-- Jim

[Natural Sound]

No, I think that the first DAC was defective. I tried it on three different computers (Windows and Linux) and used two high quality USB cables. I couldn't get any of the combinations to produce any sound.

I suppose a defective MyDAC could have somehow changed the ALSA mixer settings on the ALIX?

[Grainger49]

   .  .  .    The only thing I can think of is that maybe static electricity had something to do with it. Its been very dry in the house and I can draw a nice arc while switching on/off the lights lately.   .   .   .   
-Tom

Tom, I fried a DAC by touching it and static arcing to it.  So for years now I have run humidifiers in the winter months.  Look at the "Cheap Vinyl Accessories" thread under the Phono folder, there is a picture of a cheap humidifier that will take care of the static.

The alternative is to take a piece of metal, put a screw/bolt in it and run a wire from the screw to the screw on your power outlet.  This assumes that you have a grounded circuit.  Btu touching a grounded plate before touching anything in your system will safely discharge all static.

[Doc B.]

[Jim R.]

Tom,

Yes, I think either the bad dac or the static discharge could have effected the settings on the server -- there is data going back to the computer too, and although unlikely in most circumstances, it can and does happen.  I once had a situation with two speech synthesizers connected to one machine and some glitch happened and the synthesizers somehow managed to reprogram each other and put each other in a state where they didn't work properly, simply skipped over  commmon words, substituted c ommon words with random words and punctuation, etc.

I ended up having to reinstall the screen reader software and then, without a synthesizer and hoping things were working normally again, had to blindly follow the steps to reflash the synthesizer's firmware, and then once one had been restored, the rest was easy.  All in all, a 6 hour diversion for who knos what reason.  So yes, firmware and system files can and do get corrupted, but again I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

Fiingers crossed that this is the last of it and it's smooth listening from here on out.

And also being a resident of the rocky mountain west high arrid plains, I know the dryness and static issues very well.  One reason why we got wool carpet instead of synthetic in our new house -- far better than the old place.

-- Jim

[InfernoSTi]

...and as soon as I can get my big system up, I'll be reporting on another 24/192 PCM, plus direct, native DSD DAC -- the Sonore/exD.

-- Jim

Jim,

I'm excited to take the Sonore/exD off your hands!  Delivery should be tomorrow (arrived!)...I'm all ready to go with JRiver for Mac set up for DSD over DoP v1.  I'll report how things go...

Best,
John

[earwaxxer]

I have that static electricity issue here in the desert as well. I have inadvertently 'tested' the protection circuits in my 500wpc power amp by touching it before I touched something to ground myself. It shut down right quick with a pop, red lights flashing all over the place. No harm done. I was also getting a pop every time I touched my laptop because the static would travel down the power line of the USB to my system. I was pleased that after switching to batter power on the uLink there are no more pops.