Old Listener
Senior Member
Thanks to everyone who replied.
You know the joke about the difference between theory and practice. The punchline is "In theory, there is no difference."
I was looking for hands on experience using the Behringer DAC.
Two points:
1. I understand the USB specs. However that 0.5 amp at 5 volts input to the DC has to do more than just provide current to the balanced audio outputs.
2. Computers may not provide as much power as the USB specs says they should. Yesterday, I was trying out a configuration with a 2016 Lenovo Flex 4 laptop connected to a Peachtree USB to spdif (coax) / Toslink device. I got quite inconsistent results. Sometimes the laptop recognized the converter as an audio device and sometimes it did not.
That laptop had recently has the Win 10 update with UAC2. The converter is a UAC2 device requiring a 3rd party driver for all but recent Windows versions. I suspected that the UAC 2 support in Win 10 on the laptop was not working properly. I ruled that possibility out and got to work troubleshooting the problem. Here's what I found:
On one USB port, the converter's power LED was on but the converter wasn't recognized as an audio device. This was consistent whether the laptop was on battery power or plugged in to house power.
On a different USB port, the converter wasn't recognized as an audio device when the laptop was on battery power but was recognized properly when the laptop was on house power.
Defective laptop? No, just a bit of cheating on the specs to get more battery life.
You know the joke about the difference between theory and practice. The punchline is "In theory, there is no difference."
I was looking for hands on experience using the Behringer DAC.
Two points:
1. I understand the USB specs. However that 0.5 amp at 5 volts input to the DC has to do more than just provide current to the balanced audio outputs.
2. Computers may not provide as much power as the USB specs says they should. Yesterday, I was trying out a configuration with a 2016 Lenovo Flex 4 laptop connected to a Peachtree USB to spdif (coax) / Toslink device. I got quite inconsistent results. Sometimes the laptop recognized the converter as an audio device and sometimes it did not.
That laptop had recently has the Win 10 update with UAC2. The converter is a UAC2 device requiring a 3rd party driver for all but recent Windows versions. I suspected that the UAC 2 support in Win 10 on the laptop was not working properly. I ruled that possibility out and got to work troubleshooting the problem. Here's what I found:
On one USB port, the converter's power LED was on but the converter wasn't recognized as an audio device. This was consistent whether the laptop was on battery power or plugged in to house power.
On a different USB port, the converter wasn't recognized as an audio device when the laptop was on battery power but was recognized properly when the laptop was on house power.
Defective laptop? No, just a bit of cheating on the specs to get more battery life.