hiss-less usb powered 'dac/amp' recommendations?

[Spiug31]

I`d appreciate some help

I am looking for a usb powered 'dac/amp' to feed a pair of srh1540 headphones, low volume listening, no background hiss and sounds good with linux (youtube, podcasts, radio, cd`s ripped to flac/wav).

I currently use the motherboards onboard audio which is a 'TI ne5532' amp chip. This does well with very low background noise but audio could be bettered.

have just been using a soekris dac1101 but find it to have audible background hiss when outputing audio (this cuts off shortly after no audio is being pushed).

 

budget of $800 or less

top of my list to try currently is an 'IFI Micro iDSD Black Label', thoughts on this and others to try would be most welcome.

[wink]

Get a YGGY and a GSX MkII or balanced Dynahi, and drown out your wallet's protestations with a wall of beautiful sound reproduction.

 

Remember: It's your money, not your wallet's........   

[nopants]

dragonfly red

[Dusty Chalk]

I've used both the HRT and the HeadAmp Pico DAC/Amp with good results.  Why do you bring up hiss?  Have you had a problem with hiss before?  That's usually an impedance mismatch.  I've only ever had hiss if it was on the original recordings, or if it was a low impedance headphone out of a Ray Samuels headphone amp.

[Spiug31]

Hi Dusty,

I mentioned hiss, as with the dac1101 whenever audio is played and for 5 seconds thereafter there is clearly audible white noise style hiss. This is independant of what is being played and does not reproduce when using the motherboards inbuilt audio.

hiss present but greatly diminished when using my ATH-ANC7b (300ohm impedance) headphones, the SRH-1540 headphones have a 46ohm impedance.

the SRH-1540 is my regular listen (so comfy and sounds better at low volumes)

[grawk]

I don't care enough to google, but if this dac1101 isn't actually a headphone amp, but something you're just using to drive headphones, then I could see impedance mismatch being a real problem.  Try plugging an appropriate amp between the dac and the headphones, and see if that solves the problem.  Or buy jh13s.

[Spiug31]

copied from the manual at http://soekris.dk/download/dac1101/dac1101_manual.pdf
"6.3 mm Jack: is for connecting to a set of headphones, almost any type can be used, the loading impedance should be minimum 16 ohm, high impedance types work very well. The dac1101 is able to output minimum 3.5V RMS into 32 ohm or higher, in power that is 400 mW into 32 ohm, 120mW into 100 ohm or 40 mW into 300 ohm. "

"USB Powered DAC / Headamp Discrete R-2R Sign Magnitude DAC"
"Output Headphones 6.3mm Phono, 3.5V RMS, Zout 3R"

http://soekris.dk/dac1101.html


I don`t have a spare amp, the beta22 is innaccesible at present.

Edited August 15, 2017 by Spiug31

[dsavitsk]

3 hours ago, Dusty Chalk said:

Have you had a problem with hiss before?  That's usually an impedance mismatch.

Hiss is not due to an impedance mismatch per se. It is caused by current moving through electronic parts, and it can be exacerbated by having too much gain which amplifies it. The reason one might see it more with low impedance headphones is that they are often louder for a given voltage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson–Nyquist_noise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_noise

[Dusty Chalk]

11 minutes ago, dsavitsk said:

Hiss is not due to an impedance mismatch per se. It is caused by current moving through electronic parts, and it can be exacerbated by having too much gain which amplifies it. The reason one might see it more with low impedance headphones is that they are often louder for a given voltage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson–Nyquist_noise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_noise

Thanks for the explanation!

[gepardcv]

No clue about OP's specific headphones, but I have definitely found that a lot of amps hiss with high-sensitivity low-impedance loads. I test with a JH13.

In the inexpensive range, consider an Emotiva Big or Little Ego. Not dead silent, but close and much better than the original DragonFly (no idea about newer versions). Also an O2+ODAC, though they are often built with way too much gain, which may make problems of its own.

The best performing devices, with zero hiss audible to me with sensitive IEMs, in my experience have been Apple iPhones and iPads, and the new Soekris dac1541 (though the latter doesn't quite kill all sound at minimum volume; it's not a big deal though).

[Voltron]

A musician friend just asked me if anybody was talking about the H2 Designs MIYO dac/adc/headamp that is USB powered and tiny.  He claims -- as does the website https://gomiyo.com/ -- that audio engineers are hot on this product because it has "high grade converters with super low jitter rates."  I have not found a single mention here on HC but I am curious if anyone has looked at it.  

[EdipisReks1]

32 minutes ago, Voltron said:

A musician friend just asked me if anybody was talking about the H2 Designs MIYO dac/adc/headamp that is USB powered and tiny.  He claims -- as does the website https://gomiyo.com/ -- that audio engineers are hot on this product because it has "high grade converters with super low jitter rates."  I have not found a single mention here on HC but I am curious if anyone has looked at it.  

There is a lot of marketing speak on that website.  As somebody who works in marketing, it makes me suspicious. 

[Voltron]

This part has at least less marketingspeak, in case anyone wants to comment on the chips used.  Two reviews comment on the fact that the entire thing gets nuclear-hot after using it for awhile, so there's that to consider too.

MIYO’s analog audio path is comprised of very high-quality components. Starting at the DAC, all volume attenuation is handled at the analog output, where we take the digital volume control from the OS and control the analog output level from the DAC. The eliminates any extraneous gain staging and potential issues arising from it, so right out of the gate, MIYO is treating your audio better than most.

That ability is one reason we selected the PCM1792A DAC. Of course the main reason is that in our humble opinion it’s the finest sounding DAC available today. We are pre-biasing the DAC output to force it into class-A operation. The DAC has crazy specs anyway, but this is a little trick to get rid of any residual crossover distortion.

From there, audio gets passed into the Texas Instruments OPA1664 opamp for both current-to-voltage conversion and anti-image filtering to the two headphone amps. This opamp has amazing performance, with extremely low noise and distortion, so that no coloration of the audio occurs at all. The entire signal path from the DAC output to the headphone amps is balanced.

The opamp passes audio to the headphone amps, which are truly remarkable. We’re using the Texas Instruments (noticing a trend here?) TPA6120 headphone amp, which is a current-feedback type amplifier. We run it on high voltage +/-15V rails (pretty sweet considering we’re on USB bus-power), and it delivers in every way – 128 dBA SNR, 112.5dB THD+N, 1300V/µs Slew rate – with great power at 80mW into 600 Ohms. The entire output path is DC-coupled. Offsets are servoed out using the DAC’s precision voltage reference (heavily filtered). Coupled with MIYO’s very high quality clocking and conversion, this translates into excellent dynamics and transient response, a lifelike 3D soundstage, and striking clarity – it’s your music the way it was meant to be heard.

The input side is treated with equal respect. We selected the PCM4220 for our ADC - another part which usually finds itself in high-end pro audio gear. Our analog input stage uses the fully differential THS4532 opamp - this allows us to cancel ground noise from the unbalanced input jack. We managed to incorporate gain and antialiasing filtering into a single stage, so this is the only amplifier between the input and the converter. The ADC is driven differentially by the amplifier stage to minimize noise and distortion.

We’re very particular about passive components in the audio path as well – we use 0.1% Metal Film resistors, and PPS Film and Niobium Oxide capacitors exclusively. All selected to be the lowest noise, lowest distortion, non-microphonic components available – no expense is spared.

To sum it up: the analog path is designed to take advantage of the digital side of MIYO as much as possible, making sure that the audio is the highest quality possible from end to end. And we believe the resulting sound is remarkable.

[skullguise]

FWIW, the MIYO is now on Massdrop for $180 at lowest price.

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/h2-designs-miyo-dac-amp?1=1