RME ADI-2 DAC

The analog sections of pro dacs tend to be better than hifi ones easily. Headamps? Who gives a shit? They work and are better than the Neurochrome, THX, and less veiled than Magni 3.

Uh it depends on your price point. Pro world is mostly active crossovers with plate amps now so what remains are pa amps and uh Bryston crap. The class ab ones are the lower powered ones and will stomp anything consumer or hifi you can get for the used price 150-300 something bucks. Can you get better hifi amp than that for more money? Yes. Is it worth driving a pair of passive crossover speakers with a 1000-2000 dollar amp versus paying a little more Than the passive for the active version of the same speaker? Usually no, eg ATC. Most of the time, it will be worse, you can only mess it up, and it’s for ocd tweakers, class a and tube fetishists only.

The typical modern class d plate amp, which tend to actually be better than the cheapo class d separate amps and even better than the hypex Ncore stuff in some ways. The class ab plate amps are typically fine and comparable to what you can get in a separate amp (pro or hifi) except for noise floor but then consider that separate, quieter amp is running through a passive crossover and isn’t powering the driver directly like the plate amps in an active monitor so that itself is not a 100% upgrade despite being a better amp.

Basically don’t worry about it too much, stop tweaking, get stuff that actually works for you. If you can’t be bothered to do what @Vtory says and figure out the outputs and inputs of everything, the answer is no unless you want to throw away all your “special boutique” crap or ditch that “bang for buck” receiver and other gear.

Soekris is only an alternative to the RME for objectivist idiots from Reddit, diy idiots, and people who “think different” as they want even less dynamics. You’d be better off buying something else. The internal headamp sucks too.

There’s no point in buying that THX Massderp amp with any of these; it sounds worse than the typical internal headamp of upper end desktop boxes. Cavalli will be more colored so ab it with internal headamp first and buy used so you can just flip it if you grow to hate it.

Real desktop alternatives in terms of features and sound quality to RME are stuff like:
Lavry DA11
Lynx Hilo
Dangerous Source
Prism usb interfaces (Lyra, Callia, Atlas, Titan)

All of these are good but sound totally different. UA Apollo, Apogee, and MOBU stuff typically has worse sound quality but they work. I dislike the forced Cubase integration of the Steinberg stuff but the higher channel count interfaces do have decent DA conversion (better than Soekris) but bleh headamps and AD.

 

@Psalmanazar I'm with you on the soekris it is very detailed but it feels so slow, specially with guitar riffs, also no highs.

So could you name any pro amps near 500 $ or a bit up. I always see examples of good pro dacs but never for pro amps.

 

Expensive pro power amps? You could
buy the class ab pa stuff new instead of used. There’s always Bryston, ATC, the Benchmark amp, and stuff that uses the typical higher end class D modules (newer hypex, pascal, icepower). Try before you buy. Most pro stuff is active now and a lot of mastering engineers will use stuff like b & w floorstanders with whatever hifi amps they like in addition to whatever nearfields they like and work well with.

 

English is not my first language so maybe I'm getting it wrong but you talking about speaker amps?

 

I've got one foot in the PA world. Before you go digging into those amps though, remember that most of them have active fan cooling. This might matter in a home environment, especially the older amps where the fans are likely a bit worn out and will make quite a lot of rattle.

 

Yes. For headamps, who cares. Don’t bother buying pro speaker amps unless you want to fan mod a class ab pa amp or that Bryston, Benchmark, or ATC, or class D amp is the one you truly want sound wise more than comparably priced hifi stuff for your passive speakers. Pro world is mostly active now.

 

Hmm my question was about pairing the dac with a pro headphone amp. So from what I understand, us headphone users should just stick with hi-fi gear unless we wanna venture with outputs mismatches .

 

There really aren't "pro headphone" amps. Space is generally a premium and the headphone output is a convenience feature tacked onto other equipment, such as DACs or monitoring mixers.

If the headamp is designed well enough (ie not the O2), some hifi ones can take hot inputs.

 

Well actually...
https://www.sweetwater.com/c413--Headphone_Amplifiers_and_Distribution

Most of those are forgettable, although the SPL gets an honorable (though expensive) mention. I'm actually curious about the Focusrite AM2, as it is still likely the cheapest integrated dac/amp Dante option.

 

Actually there are pro-headphone amps. Usually a distributed system for cue mix to multiple musicians. Ever see a small orchestra dubbing to prerecorded multitrack for film where everyone has a one sided can, not just the conductor? Furman has an example system, though not large enough for the scenario I just described. One of my colleagues specializes in providing equipment along with his cue mix chops for such sessions. But these are utility amps, not going to be "refined" to audiophile standards.

 

Bringing this thread back on topic for a moment, the ADI-2 DAC is the one I've settled on for the coming couple of years.

Having gone through this thread I'm aware there are likely to be better DACs for the money, however this was the only one directly available where I am that offered me an AIO solution with the exact features that I needed. It's raison d'être for being in my system is to drive powered monitors and accept both USB and Optical, with priority on Optical so I don't need to switch or unplug anything, and it does that very well.

The Headphone amp is a more than acceptable bonus for me as so far it's bettered my Mojo with every headphone I've tried with it (disclaimer - my headphone stable is between $250 and $800 in terms of individual cost), with the Mojo feeling slightly congested by comparison, but really that's only noticeable on a direct A/B comparison.

So all in all for what it costs and the features that it offers I'm very happy with it, in fact I'd go as far to say that if, like me, it suits your requirements then it's probably a bit of a bargain.

 

For a person who doesn't need huge soundstage or coloration from the amp and loves to make an EQ-preset for every headphone under the roof, this is the product that gets things just right. After about a year of use I'm very much settled on just using the 5-band EQ and bass/treble settings - no crossfeed, loudness or different dac filters need to be fiddled with here. It was nice to see what those were about, though.

Here's where it shoots sound:
- XLR into active monitors
- RCA into ZDT Jr. (dynamic headphones)
- HP-out (planars)
- IEM-out (Andro)

My background is in amateur recording, production, playing guitar, drums and loving headphones. This marries very nicely with this pro-minded product aimed at audiophiles. I'm hearing people talk of lacking dynamics, soundstage etc. I'm simply not going to listen because I like what I'm hearing here. And I wouldn't know what to do if I had simpler DAC without these features.

I think it's just silly to fiddle with one's gear if stuff works.

 

I just installed ADI-2 DAC feeding my my Hegel H160 over balanced XLR cables, to compare to my Chord Qutest. I can't see this in the manual, can anyone let me know what output and volume settings I should use to fix the output at the standard 2 or 2.1V (I guess 4V balanced) from the ADI to match with the Qutest 2V SE output, as well as get the best quality out of the ADI?

Going by ear with the default out-of- box auto-ref level on, I'm having to set -9.5 or 10Db on the ADI volume control to get a similar output level at the speakers (vs Qutest set at 2V).

I'm trying this as curiosity got the better of me, and I'd like to see how much, if anything, I would lose by replacing the Hegel integrated and Quad S-5 passives with active monitors (Mackie HR824mk2 type budget) fed and volume-controlled by the ADI-2

 

Don't know about the correct volume level for 2 volts, but you'd want to set the digital attenuation to 0dB for best the quality. I think this was discussed somewhere on this forum - someone noticed using digital attenuation hurts microdynamics.

 

See manual page 62, set to level 7dBu and 0 dB attenuation. So even for people with digital attenuation nervosa this will be fine. RME’s digital attenuation is well implemented (@Torq said so, too), I do not think that normal attenuation levels will do much harm.

 

Thanks both, that works well and pretty close to the output level from the Chord DAC.

I've been playing around a little with the EQ and find it really nice to be able to dial in a bit of warmth or 'house curve' to suit my tastes or particular recordings.

I need to listen some more to know whether this is good enough for me to let the Qutest go. Initial impressions are that the chord has a slight advantage in bass texture & control, stage depth, but the sound and functional flexibility of the RME could more than make up for that, especially if it works well directly feeding active speakers in a simplified system.

 

I was listening to a random review, and youtube automatically jumped to this video next. I kept listening to it not for the purpose of comparing sounds but because the music sounded so good through my modded superlux 668 headphones (32 bucks), liquid spark, fx audio pre (32 bucks), and a Fiio dac (10 bucks) which I dug up from a box in the basement recently because my USB DACs are being f'ing ass fucked by ground loop noise from my PC. Anyways the video might be worth a listen just for the song and it is played through the RME ADI-2 DAC and some Mytek (the speakers are MANGERS which are kinda big in Europe and Asia but not in North America. I listened to an older model of it years ago in Yerevan of all places):

 

I wasn't sure where to put this since there isn't a DAW/Audio Interface type area. @Psalmanazar mentioned Steinberg audio interfaces when I was all woe is me and my Focusrite Scarlett died.

I bought a Clarett and thought it was great except the random dropouts I kept getting (worse than the Scarlett). I bought the Axe I/O because it was a new guitar-focused interface and sounded good but the latency was bad.

Got annoyed. Found a used Steinberg UR28M and bought it. Latency is mediocre on it but it works really well, vocals and guitar recording are good on it, etc. Since it was used, I couldn't return it and decided to find a way to live with it.

Now on to why we're in the ADI-2 DAC thread.

I remembered that you could use it in full duplex mode. I'm now outputting the digital signal from the UR28M interface via coax to the RME ADI-2 DAC. That's what goes into my DAW, and the latency on the RME drivers is nucking futs. It's really fast.

As measured by RTL utility, I'm getting less than 2.5ms round trip latency. That's bonkers! As an added bonus, I have the RME outputting to a tube headphone amp for extra sauce.

The key was that I had to go into the ADI-2 DAC's I/O menu and choose USB (Rec coax) so it could record the digital input but play back USB->analog. Initially I was a little dismayed because it was just giving me the raw signal to my headphones, then I decided to look at the manual and the solution was right there.

 

Have all the Windows issues been sorted out with the latest driver? (I read that Windows would apparently see this as a new device whenever the bitrate or sampling rate changed.)

 

That's intentional. The main difference now is that it's class compliant, so if you don't like that behavior you don't have to install the RME driver.