Ears, amps and Speakers.

[MrRadish]

Interestingly, I did an AB comparison between my Caiman SEG dac and the Xonar D1 sound card dac in my PC, with both of them connected to the amp at the same time. The SEG to my ears sounds more agressive in the highs than the Xonar does.

Anyone else have a SEG?

I have the SEG and it definitely isn't aggressive. It's one of the sweetest DACs I have. However I have both the GFU (previous version) and SEG and one of the little SMPS they came with injects some noise into the left channel (iirc). The other one doesn't. This is only noticeable on the SEG, not the GFU, and I'm not sure which one it was. I think they're the same model so it's probably just unit variation. I use a linear PSU now anyway so I've not heard it for a while.

Aggressiveness was also a feature of my system for a long time until I found the right mains filter, with a Furman LIFT filter being the first I found to tackle that particular issue. My mains has been much more friendly recently, as determined by another unfiltered system, so it's something that comes and goes. I know a lot of people are using batteries to power DACs which also works. If your soundcard is running off the ATX PSU then that may be much better filtered.

I've also installed a lot of acoustic foam in my listening room as it was very live previously. In hindsight I could have just switched the dining and living rooms around as the dining room is much better behaved, but the foam is glued to the walls and ceiling now. Until it falls off from the heat.

[meBob]

Hello MrRadish,

Thanks for your reply.

I've heard my SEG with a battery and I found it hard to hear any big difference from the stock psu. I also had a cheap Chinese dac before the SEG that had swappable opamps, I sold the Chinese dac and so didn't do a comparison with the SEG, but I thought the Chinese dac with one opamp in particular did sound very mild mannered.

To be honest it would be unfair to accuse the SEG of being bright without a good few other dacs to compare it to on a truly neutral system and for the most part I'm happy with its performance.

I too have done some DIY acoustic treatment and I have to say I'm happy with the results, I didn't realise how much of an effect/affect it was having until I payed attention to the room and not the kit.

Does your linear supply noticeably "relax" the sound compared to the stock psu?

[MrRadish]

Does your linear supply noticeably "relax" the sound compared to the stock psu?

A little, yes, although it wasn't earth shattering. It didn't change the nature of the DAC but the overall sound became more refined and measured.

The only other thing I can think of is if the source is lacking (poor clock quality, power supply noise, USB noise etc). Is your PC the main source, and do you use USB, optical or coax to the SEG if so? Do you have an old analogue tuner or cassette deck you can plug into the system to compare it with? That should at least help narrow the problem down to source, amp or speakers.

[meBob]

It's connected via optical so as to eliminate noise.

Sadly, I don't have any older analogue separates to test with (good suggestion though).

Although I threw out an old Technics tape deck a few years back (the stupid things I do).

[MrRadish]

I've found the optical outputs from motherboards to be quite poor, even on the fancy gaming boards I've used. Does the soundcard have a digital output you can try?

[meBob]

It's not connected via a motherboard integrated soundcard, but optically by a Asus Xonar D1 soundcard.

This is a decent sound card, It has a pass through/bypass function that passes the PCM file straight to the SEG. The Xonar is completely bypassed.