HOTAUDIO bit-perfect USB dac headphone amp first impressions

[The Vinyl Adventure]

this little thingy apeared on my door mat this morning

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=280353081170

when i say little ... its tiny, fits in the palm of your hand!

i will post a few piccys when i can be bothered if any one would like?

so anyway i plugged it inbetween the pc and the bantam tripath this avo. took a bit of fiddling to get it to work after the fiddleing it took to get the soudblaster to work but i got there in the end

i always listen to regina spektor's 'begin to hope' when i want to work out how good something sounds as i love the clean sound of the production and it is particularly dinamic.
specifically the tracks 'fidelity' and 'edit'
i listened to 'fidelity' and felt something was missing in the bass. i then listened to edit and realised the plain fact that there is no bass! no depth to the lower frequencys at all!
this is a major caveat for sure! but i think that it still should be considored a caveat as aposed to a flat reason not to buy this thing! the sound is otherwise a pleasure to listen to, its much more open and lively sounding than the dead sound i got from the soundblaster and i will definatly continue to use it!

i also think that the lack in bass maybe a combination of useing this little thing with the tripath...

i will let it run in and see if things change, if not i will then plug it into to somthing with more guts and report on that

i hope i have used enough audiophile adjectives for all in my first "review" and will update at a later date ....

[The Vinyl Adventure]

its actually annoying me now

listening to 'sympathy' by super fury animals. all the jangly guitars sound realy nice and all the little noises in the background are there.. his voice sounds right but the bass line is faint!
even the brum and bass bit sounds well timed and all the sqeeks and pops are sharp and detailed but where is the god damn bass????

[StanleyB]

Like I am going to have to develop a USB headphone amp....

[DaveK]

Hi Hamish,
At the risk of stating the obvious, (an ability at which I excel :)), shouldn't you be adressing the "where is the bass" question to the guy in Canada? He may be able to resolve the matter with a little tweaking that would take you ages to find on your own.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

im useing this as a pre for the tripath for my office speakers stan! for £50 its so close but yet so far... its so frustrating!
ever thought of making a simple usb only version of the 7520 ... that would literally tick all the boxes for this aplication
and i think there would be quite the market for it at the right price!!

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Hi Hamish,
At the risk of stating the obvious, (an ability at which I excel :)), shouldn't you be adressing the "where is the bass" question to the guy in Canada? He may be able to resolve the matter with a little tweaking that would take you ages to find on your own.

i will, but i dont think it will solve anything.. i have been fiddling with drivers and things to try and get a different response from it

i even tryed (and shh dont tell anyone) tweaking the eq

[StanleyB]

and i think there would be quite the market for it at the right price!!
I reckon it should be possible for £50 shipped to anywhere in the world. The hardest bit is getting the case done.

Stan

[The Vinyl Adventure]

ok so here is the convo with dave of hot audio
im the red, he is the blue



i bought one of the bit perfect dacs off you the other week and it arived
the other day
i got it working no problem at all and it sounds great apart from the bass
being a bit weak is there anything that can be done about this? if not
ishould say im not unhappy with it by any stretch it sounds better than i
expected it to
also can i draw you atention to this thread i started on this forum

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?p=49637#post49637

i might well be worth you joining this forum and commenting on my comments
as there are a lot of people into computer audio and frequently people ask
about good value small dacs

all the best

hamish

.......

lol, it has TONNES of bass response, it goes down to near zero Hertz....

It's got to be your amplifier or your speakers.

I've sold 100's of these, and believe me, the BIT PERFECT goes lower then anything else out there....

Plug it into a big amplifier and some big speakers and then see what it does :)

You actually can't get more bass response without going DC coupled outputs, and the DAC doesn't allow for that... no DACs do have that ability.... yet...

I read your blog, and I may join the site, but I'm a very busy guy with less and less time everyday....

Try a solid Power Amplifier.

No class D or switching Amplifiers...

And some BIG speakers, like 10 inch subs or 18 inch, whatever you've got or can afford.

With the right amp and speakers the BIT PERFECT will blow the walls down.

I kid you not...

Dave.

.......

ok cheers i did have a feeling it might be something to do with the little tripath amp its just i have had much better bass response from it with other dacs! i shall take your word for now and run it with my main system at some point to see how it sounds with a real hifi
is it ok if i quote your message on the forum for others to read?

i currently use foobar with aiso support, is there a better system for getting the information to the dac?

........

Sure post my comments for sure...

Other DAC had more bass, interesting....

Are you sure you've turned up the "main" volume setting on you PC.

This DAC turns the main volume to 1/2 and most people don't realize that right away and don't turn it up.

Turn all the volumes all the way up!

Dave :)

.......

all the volumes are up, it doesnt apear to have affected anything like that

what software do you recomend for music playback i am more than willing to try other things if it will effect the sound in a positive way!


........

Well I prefer winamp.

I've tried lots of other players like foobar2000, but found there was always something lacking....

So I've always come back to winamp :)

Seems to me to be the best overall sound.

Warmest sound for sure, and lots of detail.

Dave.

.......

can you think of any other reason why the bass might be lacking slightly

.......

The only thing I can think of is the amplifier.

I use a very straight forward design and the DAC is self setting at zero db gain across the board of frequencies.

So I really can only think it is the amp or the speakers.

Perhaps the other DACs have some sort of bass boost inside them...

I actually add a bit of bass, just to keep it warm, but I don't go overboard.

Everyone seems to like a warm sound :)

Dave



anyone got any thoughts on his comments

[DaveK]

Hi Hamish,
I can't contribute technically to these discussions but I'm sure plenty of others will. I only have 2 comments: -
1) as far as one can judge from your exchanges with Dave he sounds a genuine sort of guy who really believes in his product,
2) I think this thread will run and run for quite a while - I hope that it leads to a successful outcome for you.
Cheers,

[Alex Nikitin]

Bass quality may depend on quite a few things in a DAC, including power supply, clock arrangement, output stage configuration etc. "Near zero Hertz" has actually very little to do with the bass quality. And there are DACs with DC coupled output stage - and that is not a panacea either. It is also very often that a perceived lack of bass helps to "improve" performance in the mid and high frequency areas. It is not right way of doing it, though.

Alex

[The Vinyl Adventure]

yeah ijust find it a bit confusing. i to am a bit short on the technical knowledge!
the problem i find with his comments are to do with the comparison i make to the other dac i have used in the same set up, namly the 7520
if he is corect in what he says then surly the 7520 would sound overly bassy in any other system?

maybe stan can comment or explain how his dac is capable of suppling a more dynamic and balanced sound in comparison to the hotaudio?

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Bass quality may depend on quite a few things in a DAC, including power supply, clock arrangement, output stage configuration etc. "Near zero Hertz" has actually very little to do with the bass quality. And there are DACs with DC coupled output stage - and that is not a panacea either. It is also very often that a perceived lack of bass helps to "improve" performance in the mid and high frequency areas. It is not right way of doing it, though.

Alex



it is usb powerd, is this perhaps a likely cause of this issue?

[Alex Nikitin]

it is usb powerd, is this perhaps a likely cause of this issue?

It is a possibility. Without looking inside that DAC it is impossible to make proper suggestions.

Alex

[The Vinyl Adventure]

i shall take some photos of it wheni get a mo

[The Vinyl Adventure]

here you go

http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww282/hamish_gill/P1010353.jpg

http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww282/hamish_gill/P1010354.jpg

can you make out anything from those?

[Alex Nikitin]

can you make out anything from those?

Err... yes. But perhaps I should not make public comments :( . How much is this thing anyway?

Alex

P.S. I found the price. For this money you can not blame this device for anything.

P.P.S - it uses PCM2705 (http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/pcm2705.html) . It is a toy, not really hi-fi and a bit expensive at that. Probably good enough to play MP3 thought :scratch: .

[The Vinyl Adventure]

i paid £50 for it
it was worth a stab for that money i felt, and like i said im not teribly disapointed with it! it does sound suprisingly ok if you arnt fused about the lack of bass

i was thinking last night after i went to bed, he says:

"Try a solid Power Amplifier.

No class D or switching Amplifiers...

And some BIG speakers, like 10 inch subs or 18 inch, whatever you've got or can afford.

With the right amp and speakers the BIT PERFECT will blow the walls down."

basically put it with a loud bassy system and it will be loud and bassy
well, you could say that about any source, you could plug an mp3 player into a 18 kilowatt pa rig and it would be loud and bassy and "blow the walls down"

ah well no great loss im happy with it until stan makes an equivelent (BIG HINT FOR YOU THERE STAN!!!) it is better sounding than my soundblaster was and that was the perpours of this whoe exercise

[The Vinyl Adventure]

just plugged it through the main system and it sounded fine i dont want to do another u turn or anthing but i think it must be the combination with the tripath somehow making it lack so in the bass
plugging it through the main system did highlight a few other downfalls to it. the soundstage is all to cock, there is a bit of noise in there somewhere and the sound isnt as full as it could be. but still not bad for the money (even if it is expensive for whats actually in it, after all wouldhave no idea how to make this thing!)

[Alex Nikitin]

but still not bad for the money (even if it is expensive for whats actually in it, after all wouldhave no idea how to make this thing!)

£50 is about right for it, IMHO.

Alex

[leo]

The internal digital to analogue out of those cheap codec chips is quite poor .
Some places even just stick passive parts on the output and wonder why it sounds weedy

Obviously they make ok all in one IC's on the cheap and compact, some have SPDIF out and others offer I2S too to feed a separate dac