gandalfandula
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- Nov 25, 2020
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I recently made some diy XLR to XLR cables for my audio system. I was careful to solder everything correctly and used a multimeter to check the pinouts on both ends to verify continuity and correct wiring - all pins are connected correctly and the shells are not conducting anything to the pins.
I tried the cables with my Monoprice THX AAA headphone amp and Benchmark DAC1. Though they do work I noticed on the high gain setting on the amp that it sounds very obviously distorted with my HD650 300 ohm headphones. I am wondering if this is something to do with a mismatch between the XLR output on the DAC and the input on the amp, or possibly the amp just doesn't sound good at high gain over XLR? I tried using the single ended outputs with a pair of cheap retail stereo audio RCA cables and there was no distortion at any gain or volume level.
Could it be something with the cables?
I tried my other DAC with the XLR output and it didn't seem to have the static/distortion issue. I think the XLR output on the DAC1 might not be copacetic with the headphone amp's high gain setting. Maybe the gain is too high?
I tried the cables with my Monoprice THX AAA headphone amp and Benchmark DAC1. Though they do work I noticed on the high gain setting on the amp that it sounds very obviously distorted with my HD650 300 ohm headphones. I am wondering if this is something to do with a mismatch between the XLR output on the DAC and the input on the amp, or possibly the amp just doesn't sound good at high gain over XLR? I tried using the single ended outputs with a pair of cheap retail stereo audio RCA cables and there was no distortion at any gain or volume level.
Could it be something with the cables?
I tried my other DAC with the XLR output and it didn't seem to have the static/distortion issue. I think the XLR output on the DAC1 might not be copacetic with the headphone amp's high gain setting. Maybe the gain is too high?
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