Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

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Exasound e38 DAC - I'm not a happy camper

Posted by Chris from Lafayette on May 17, 2017 at 17:45:10:
I finally connected everything up and started playing around with it today. It took a while for everything to jell, but I finally got it all working - first just with iTunes and 2-channel, then with Audirvana+ and HQ Player in multi-channel. (I've got the current, latest versions of each on my system.) I'm using Core Audio because I couldn't get ASIO to work. My set-up is as follows: Mac Mini USB connected to the e38 with analogue IC's connecting to the analogue multi-channel inputs of my pre-pro.

As mentioned in the subject line, I'm not a happy camper, for a number of reasons:
There's a noticeable hum now in my system - it was barely audible before, but now it's appreciably louder.
(This is the most bizarre.) Some multi-channel files play fine - notably, the files which I've downloaded from BIS, and also one file which I'd ripped with DVD-Audio Extractor. OTOH, the files which I've downloaded from Chandos have the sounds going to the wrong channels! (Some type of full range signal is ending up in the sub-woofer, while the Right-Front and Left-Front speakers don't play anything at all - Go figure!).
In general, even on the BIS files which do play fine, I just don't hear any any improvement over the previous SQ (with the Mac Mini connected directly into my pre-pro via HDMI) - and certainly not $4,000 worth. (The reason this previous set-up became unsatisfactory is because the video synchronization between the Mac Mini and the pre-pro became increasingly unstable. The current connection, with the Mac Mini video directly connected to the TV via HDMI is once again completely stable.)

Fortunately, Exasound has a 30-day money-back guarantee (less shipping), and I'm planning to send it back, unless I get some kind of revelation in the next week or so.