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Carson
10-12-2009, 01:52
I decided recently to give the headphone out on my Caiman a test recently, and I must say, I am really rather impressed (even with £60 Goldring DR150's).

I did however notice something rather odd.
With the volume dial at anything more than 25-30 degrees of movement, there is absolutely no distortion what so ever and all sounds fantastic. :eyebrows:
However, if the volume dial is less than the first 25-30 degrees, the audio is very crackly. It would also seem that with the dial as far anti-clockwise as possible, I can still hear the music, though its very faint and crackly. :scratch:

Its hardly a major issue, all listening volumes for me are above the crackly bit, but I bugs me a little that its there.

Is this a known issue with the Caiman or range of DACs or am I the only one suffering with this? :confused:

Stan, if you read this....Any suggestions?

StanleyB
10-12-2009, 07:05
The volume adjustment circuit goes from max to minimum in order to maintain dynamic range at any level. On simpler designes the volume tends to go from maximum, to zero. That method has its limitation on sound quality.
The side effect of using the max/min method is that teh signal is never shorted to ground by the pot when the volume control knob is at zero. So you can get to hear a faint bit of the sound when the music is peaking.

Not heard about any crackling though. TRy a different headphone and use a CD player as source to double check.

Carson
10-12-2009, 18:37
That would explain why you can always hear the music then.
I will give see if the crackling is apparent through the headphone jack connected to my hi-fi and a pair of earphones.