A Geek Goes Flying

Shanling M1s being used as a DAC So I found a good deal on a used Schiit Jotunheim 2 , but it doesn’t come with a DAC. I expect I’ll pop in a $100 ES9028 card and probably splurge and pay the $50 to have Schiit install it. I’m positive I could do it, but Schiit will bump the warranty on the whole package to 2 years if I do that: “For out-of-warranty products, having Schiit install the DAC module re-activates the warranty on the complete product for 2 years.” But I haven’t done that yet. And I should be responsible and sell off some of the gear I’m not using to cover the cost of the upgrade. (I already sent a Schiit Hel off to a new home...) But I know me and I know I’m going to want to play with my new “toy” at least a little bit, which means it’s going to need a signal.  At first I was going to drop $25 or so on an Apple USB-C to 3.5 mm dongle , a USB A/C adapter , and a decent 3.5mm to RCA Cable , but then I screeched the needle off the record and realized how silly it was to s...

I upgraded from the Loxjie A30 (a gorgeous small desktop DAC/amp that uses an older DAC ( ES9023 ) and puts out a claimed 80Wx2 (4Ω), 40Wx2 (8Ω) into speakers, and only has a  ⌀ 6.35 mm headphone jack) to the Loxjie A40 . The A40 isn’t quite as nice (it’s more of a standard chassis with a faceplate), and is significantly bigger, but pumps a claimed 85W into my bookshelf speakers and ditches the wall wart for a standard NEMA 5-15P (left) to IEC-320-C13 power cable. And, most importantly, it has a  ⌀ 4.4 mm headphone jack for the balanced cables on my cans. Silly me, I thought it would have a decent headphone output. But. It is impossible to find specs for the A40’s headphone stage. It’s not on the Loxjie site or in the manual . An Amazon question “[w]hat’s the headphone power output?” got the non-helpful response: “Output Power:stereo 165Wx2(4Ω) / 85Wx2(8Ω).” The reviews that are out there so far don’t address this spec, and a question on one YouTube review has sat unanswe...

Was listening to SiriusXM on my Mac, using the web interface . SiriusXM web interface playing Korn. Listening casually at not a high volume, I noticed a little harshness, likely compression artifacts?, in the sound, using my Loxjie A40 powering Klipsch B-100 bookshelf speakers. I’m new to this combination, so I started to worry a tiny bit - is the A40 a lesser quality unit than the A30? Did I maybe get a bad one? What’s going on? A short while later I was watching a YouTube video of Biden giving a speech regarding student loan forgiveness, and it was definitely clipping. WTF?! This isn’t good ... But, wait. I downloaded the clip using a Firefox plugin and copied the audio track out into a stand-alone file:  % ffmpeg -i President\ Biden\ gives\ remarks\ from\ Culver\ City.mp4 -acodec copy President\ Biden\ gives\ remarks\ from\ Culver\ City.m4a A peek at the audio track in Audacity showed what I kinda thought it might: Blown out audio. Audacity showing clipped waveforms. Just to be...