I don't believe the USB cable has any effect, but I already replied that the USB voltage might be doing something although I did provide the caveat that your motherboard is just operating in spec, albeit at potentially the upper voltage range. So, maybe it is possible that your USB voltage is helping and maybe Amir's USB voltage was lower....but then I don't know enough about how the G6 DAC processes that voltage to know whether it would be significant or not in relation to any distortion seen in this review. Either way, it wouldn't be sensible to listen to your own anecdotal recommendations that it's "OK" to run at 100% because you say you have no distortion....your recommendation/subjective listening experience is carrying no weight against what was measured in this review (for a start you've not even measured the distortion, you're just talking about whether you personally can hear it)....so it's folly for people to listen to your advice vs what has been found in Amir's review re distortion. I'll say it again, if people want to make sure they're getting the best out of their G6 DAC then they need to be running at or below 79% windows volume.Actually it is about power. If you have enough capacitance to filter DC that means you are able to compensate for drops of voltage on the cable when consumption peaks. You get drops on DC voltage specifically because cable resistance. If you lower that resistance you lower the voltage drops so capacitance for filtering these drops becomes less important. If you increase voltage that you start with, it may be sufficient to compesante for the drops and stay above the treeshold that leads to distorsions. Just assumptions of course. USB voltage may be specified as up to 5.25 but in reality is not there in most of the cases, actually I have 4 computers nearby and all are under 5.05 and that's without any significant draw so increasing may actually do something in most of the cases. Increasing means you upper your real voltage, not the maximum theoretical specification. Of course everything i write is anecdotal, no measurement, no double blind testing, as most of us here write all the time but ohm law (hence the cable "perhaps" solution) is beyond anecdotal. And I consider myself sensible) (just joking
I saw something similar when I looked at an Asus Xonar U7 volume control panel, but most of the resources on the net show -2dBFS to be the equivalent of a linear 79% volume. See the following:
Actyally I am totally convincend that in most of the cases cables are not an issue in 21st century, except when something makes you think they cannot carry enough power (and as an EE I fully trust Amrim's smell sense in his opinion about DC possible issue). By all means I advice anyone to use/buy a dac as he seems fit. I myself do not use G6 altough from other reason (I feel Topping DX3 pro more satisfying but not soundwise). Have a great evening and stay safe guys!
CheersI was just trying to answer to "Now I'm a bit curious: how is the sound from the built-in heamphone amp". This actually was asking for a subjective opinion. I really had no intention to dispute the measurements, far from it. I don't know why my experience is what it is (I cannot hear issues past 80%), if my ears ar not resolving enough or the issue may be fixed/absent because some possible objective reasons that I listed. I am perfectly aware that when one speaks about cables here on asr it smells like dynamite
I see that but if I use the analog volume control on the USB control panel I can go way under "0%" (it stops at -127dB plus on Windows the 1% volume is -70dB on the USB panel) and I still have signal (which I do when using my IEMs and having the amp pot all the way at 100% for removing any channel imbalance).
Maybe the Windows Volume control slider is not a linear relationship if that's what you're getting at....I did have my suspicions that this could be the case when dB on Asus Xonar U7 volume control didn't match calculation, but couldn't find any info on it when I googled it. If 88% is indeed -2dBFS then at least 79% is under that, so my reasoning was to use the safer 79%, plus it fits with what a percentage volume control "should" be....but maybe Microsoft have implemented the volume slider to be non-linear which would be bad practice for them because percentage volume control should be linear.
-Yes. Total myth.
About the 100% volume I don't entirely agree. I mean we have seen that usually a DAC performs at its best when it's at full volume (0dBFs) and the performance degrades when you lower the output voltage. But it is also true that a well engineered and good performing DAC will give you trasparents results (because of our earing capabilities threshold and so on) at lower volumes too and so we don't need to worry about that so much.
Enabling Direct Mode is what you're supposed to do if you're just listening to music, as it guarantees no sound processing effects are applied - it's the purest way to listen to music on the G6.
Not really, often near 100% the DACS start to perform just a little worse on average according to most of the graphs in the DAC reviews on this site. Also, in addition I've recently found out that DAC performance can improve if you run just a couple of percent below max volume on all sigma delta DACS (which is most DACS). See this post: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ping-e30-dac-review.12119/page-96#post-435353 and a couple of my posts above that one that also includes a link to a different website & post by a JDS Labs rep who started this whole thing off. (Actually here's the direct link to it: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/o2-amp-odac.616331/page-249#post-11106527 )
Or just use WASAPI exclusive mode or ASIO.
It depends on the DAC engineering. There are tons over here that goes well over 2V on the RCA and indeed their performance exceed the ones at 2V (Amir test them all at his standard 2V for unbalance out e 4V for balanced out but he also adds the full scale measurements sometime to give the idea of what the DAC is capable of).
You're making this more complicated than necessary (diversionary) given your initial post re 100% Windows volume.. I've answered it.
It is related tho. In the sense that you will never output a 0dBFS signal from any DAC unless you do it on purpose for measuring reasons (or when someone badly altered an audio clip) and so 100% volume on Windows can be used if necessary.
Naaa, I sussed you out already, not gonna get embroiled with you. Read your original post I replied to (post #314).
