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The filing of the claim is a formality.

I asked to return it but prefer to do that through eBay. thr seller and I are having open communication but if we cannot come to an agreement then it's already in process of eBay to step in.

If I just message the guy (which I did to tell him what was going on) and we could not resolve the issue then I still have to file a claim and the entire process gets extended.

As to why I'm going to get a wyred... It's the DAC I originally wanted. They are a little more pricey than the musical fidelity but are known to be a better DAC. After talking with the wife, I'm just going to go ahead and get the wyred and chalk this up as an oh well purchase.

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After doing a bunch of research, I decided to go with an airport express (grabbed one for $32ppd off ebay, model A1264 so it won't slow down my network to G). I'm really not a fan of itunes, but it really is the easiest and cheapest way to do this. I'm in the process of converting all my flac to alac to add to itunes, and ripping some CDs to it as well. My next step is a DAC. I'm waiting for Schiit to get more modi 2 opticals in, but have been looking for alternatives. I came across some of these on ebay, and read some decent reviews on them on forums. Anyone have one? My budget it $100 for the DAC, so not sure if I should wait for the modi 2 or grab one of those Chinese DACs.

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Windows user, how do you have your airport express set-up? I just got mine up and running, and it sounds terrible. It has a ton of dropouts, and the audio gets really loud and quiet randomly.

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Analog for now, until my DAC arrives on Tuesday.

 

Edit: I think I fixed it. Did a hard reset on it, and reloaded and reconfigured it and it's much better.

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Analog for now, until my DAC arrives on Tuesday.

 

Edit: I think I fixed it. Did a hard reset on it, and reloaded and reconfigured it and it's much better.

 

I also just got my Airport Express today. And I set it up (analog so far - just finishing a transaction for a Cambridge DacMagic secondhand), and I set it up as the instructions described, and I got the choppiest playback from my computer. I had some success from my phone, but I couldn't play anything from iTunes. And I have a newish MacBook Pro, a very decent internet speed, and a decent router (Linksys). So I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong. Music would barely play - one second on, one second off. So I did a bunch of research.

And basically, in a nutshell, what I found out was that I could change the beacon interval settings (advanced router settings) from 100 to 50 (or even less), and that seemed to do the trick. Playback is pretty solid right now, sound quality is about what I expected at this point(I'm excited to hear it through a DAC). Just thought I'd share this in case it's something you (or others) might need to do.

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Which model do you have? I have the A1264, and I don't see the option to change the beacon interval settings.

That was in my router's advanced settings, not the settings for the AE. I lowered it to 25 even and it worked even better. Google your router's brand and find out how to change it.

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My Schiit Modi 2 optical showed up today. I don't really notice too much difference in sound, but it does sound much cleaner. I'm happy with the purchase.

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Just watched a video about a hack to use the Audioquest Dragonfly (USB DAC intended only to use on computers) on iOS devices. Once I pick up a new pair of headphones I think I'm going to pick one up and try it.

 

I think I saw this video.  Way too much of a clusterfuck of cables for me. I would rather just get one of those dedicated mobile dacs.

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My Schiit Modi 2 optical showed up today. I don't really notice too much difference in sound, but it does sound much cleaner. I'm happy with the purchase.

 

I ordered the Uber Modi 2 and didn't notice a huge difference regarding TV and video games. I did notice an improvement in audio quality via the Apple TV. It wasn't a mind blowing difference - but enough for me justifying keeping the DAC. 

 

My TV seems to have higher gain through the "headphone" port than through optical - wasn't expecting that.

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Just watched a video about a hack to use the Audioquest Dragonfly (USB DAC intended only to use on computers) on iOS devices. Once I pick up a new pair of headphones I think I'm going to pick one up and try it.

I think I saw this video.  Way too much of a clusterfuck of cables for me. I would rather just get one of those dedicated mobile dacs.

Yeah, this is a bit more expensive than the Dragonfly, but all you need is an Apple lightning to USB camera connection to use it. On my wantlist: http://www.jdslabs.com/products/84/c5d-amplifier-dac/

 

I ordered the Uber Modi 2 and didn't notice a huge difference regarding TV and video games. I did notice an improvement in audio quality via the Apple TV. It wasn't a mind blowing difference - but enough for me justifying keeping the DAC. 

 

My TV seems to have higher gain through the "headphone" port than through optical - wasn't expecting that.

Optical out should not apply any gain, as it is designed to send bitperfect audio (that is, a 1/1 representation of the audio as presented in your source material) to an external amplifier. In fact the volume control on the TV should not affect the volume of anything sent out via optical at all, if I understand correctly. Headphone out will have been amplified to whatever volume you set the TV at. This explains the difference in levels.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Do DACs have a burn in time, is burn in a really thing with audio (I see it talked about a lot)? My DAC suddenly started to sound much more crisp and clear, tons more depth to the music, even with the cheap temporary Yamaha R-S201 I'm using.

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Anyone on the fence about this - a good DAC can do really great things for your system, even a modestly priced one. If you can drop a bill, you'll be pretty pleased.

Just one thing to be cautious of. If you are using a PC and streaming the audio to your DAC via usb, there is a good chance you are actually not getting bit-perfect output.

Windows actually constantly resamples audio, adding all sorts of extra processing and mixing of audio streams, meaning the native data is not actually getting sent to the DAC, and possibly not even at its native bit depth and sample rate. You certainly aren't getting the best performance out of your gear in this situation.

There are a few ways to go about configuring this, but it's pretty dependent on both drivers and playback software. As much as I love and swear by the orange cone, VLC actually does not support bit perfect playback. I've since switched to Foobar 2000 for when I want to play back audio, since it can actually be configured for bit-perfect playback.

Here's a simple test to see if you're configured properly. You know that sound your computer plays when you connect or disconnect a USB device like an iPhone or a flash drive? Without playing any music, connect something and make the sound happen. That's good.

Now, play something pretty soft that you would certainly hear the sound over. While that song is playing, now connect a device. Hear the sound AND the music? That's pretty bad. Windows is mixing and resampling your audio.

Hope this helps, hopefully in the future windows will change how it handles audio. With native support for FLAC in windows 10, things are looking up for the future.

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For bit perfect playback, use a player that can do WASAPI. This will bypass the windows mixer, which will result in bit perfect playback. It will disable any other sounds from being played on your system at the same time too.

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Anyone wanna put an over/under on how long it'll take before Apple finally allows us to import our own FLAC files into iTunes?

It's an inevitability. With Windows supporting FLAC, streaming services like Tidal getting attention, stores like Pono and HDtracks taking away sales from iTunes... They're going to have to start offering lossless support to some extent beyond just ALAC.

FLAC is an industry standard now, ALAC simply isn't gaining any traction. iTunes actually offers fairly advanced audio handling modes (WASAPI), and it's second to none for its organizational features. It'd be nice to one day soon be able to sync my music library to my portable devices, and have a well curated browsable library rather than a bunch of files in folders.

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I'd rather foobar have the ability to use airplay. iTunes is too over bloaded on windows, but I put up with it to stream all my stuff I've ripped to ALAC.

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Here's a simple test to see if you're configured properly. You know that sound your computer plays when you connect or disconnect a USB device like an iPhone or a flash drive? Without playing any music, connect something and make the sound happen. That's good.

Now, play something pretty soft that you would certainly hear the sound over. While that song is playing, now connect a device. Hear the sound AND the music? That's pretty bad. Windows is mixing and resampling your audio.

 

Great post, I had no idea about this. What's the best way to resolve this? The instructions for setting up my Meridian Explorer tell you to go to the sound options and set the sound scheme to "none."  Then in the actual settings for the DAC you disable all enhancements. Is this enough or is there more to it? 

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