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RME ADI-2 FS Version 2 DAC and Headphone Amp Review

Zensō

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Nice. Or instead of buying a $39 Apple Lightning to USB-3 Camera Adapter and a $500 iPad you can offer streaming with a $100 RPi4. Use it with music on the


I prefer using the $100 RPi4 to wirelessly stream music from my MacBook via UPnP to the RME ADI-2 FS. It's nice having the music choices on my lap versus having to walk over to the RME to make selections. Have you found a way to control the iPad playback and music selection remotely? Or is this system mainly designed for desktop use?
I have a few RPI4 streamers throughout the house. They work fine, though Apple Music to those devices is not bit perfect. Also, there’s the Mac issue of no auto-sample rate switching, which may or may not be important to you.

The iPad streamer is part of my desktop work setup. As for the price, it’s an old hand-me-down 6th gen iPad that is not worth much in resale/trade (around $100 at Gazelle). It ended up being a really nice way to extend the life of an old device.
 

amper42

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If you use Audirvana 3.5 on the MacBook Pro with the RPi4 UPnP connection (Moode) all of the music is played in whatever sample rate it was downloaded. You can also have Audirvana upsample music but I bypass that feature.
 
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Zensō

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If you use Audirvana 3.5 on the MacBook Pro with the RPi4 UPnP connection (Moode) all of the music is played in whatever sample rate if was downloaded. You can also have Audirvana upsample music but I bypass that feature.
Yeah, I recently dropped Roon/Tidal/Qobuz and moved to Apple Music when they started offering lossless/hi-res. That means Shairport on the RPi’s, which is fine for those causal listening areas. At my more serious listening stations everything is hard-wired anyway…
 

amper42

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Like you, I'm unwilling to use Airplay as my main streaming method for critical listening. If Apple's going HiRes it would be nice if they also supported UPnP streaming with Apple Music. It wouldn't be that hard to build it into an Apple Music player.
 

Trell

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I'm using Optimized Battery Charging on my iOS devices and Macs, most of which are plugged in a majority of the time. It seems to be working fine and so far battery life has been no worse than expected. In the case of my dedicated iPad streamer connected to the RME, it's plugged in 100% of the time and will never be used for anything else, so it's a non-issue with that device.

Thanks for the link! If the iOS keeps the charge at 80% then you should be fine. It's when the cell is fully or close to fully charged that the cell lifespan will decrease much faster (and deep discharges as well). The cell will deteriorate so all we can do is to delay its inevitable demise as a consumable.
 

AlfieFroud

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I’ve tried looking online for information on this but the more I research the more I get confused lol
My understanding is this performs when it’s outputting 7v. I’m wanting to know if the speakers I want to purchase will accept that. They are the Genelec 8030C.
 

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Johannes AU

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I’ve tried looking online for information on this but the more I research the more I get confused lol
My understanding is this performs when it’s outputting 7v. I’m wanting to know if the speakers I want to purchase will accept that. They are the Genelec 8030C.

You also have to pay attention to the XLR pins .... RME manual has the pin assignment diagram.
 
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KSTR

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I am aware of that. Just checked it with my HP (K371) and had it double checked by my wife: my ADI-2 pro fs with stock PS is dead silent when in stand by.
Yes, and this will be the case for many other users as well. It all depends on the circumstances:
- DAC is fully floating, typical use case would be using the optical input, or USB via a USB galvanic isolator
- Only used with headphones, to remain fully floating
- Phones are medium to high impedance and sensitivity
- Phones cable is long and unshielded
- Mains supply is in the high range, 230V
==> High chances you will get audible hum in standby. This is the effect of capacitive stray current flowing through the voice coils, from power supply back to earth, through the air (!) -- the capacitive coupling to "world".
I just double checked with my HD700, I can hear a just audible faint 100Hz hum/buzz when the RME is in standby. So, it's there, though practically irrelevant in my case.
Giving the power supply secondary voltage a fixed reference by earth-grounding the RME removes or greatly reduces the amount of capacitive stray current. And even while in normal use the voice coils are shorted out by the low amp output impedance (no stray current through the phones) I still think it is a good idea in general to nail down the DAC's ground, this also removes the tickling feeling you have when you touch any metal parts of the DAC.
We don't want the DAC's ground move around at 100Vac worst case, with an rectified AC waveform of the stray current -- lots of harmonics.
 
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Headchef

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If you use Audirvana 3.5 on the MacBook Pro with the RPi4 UPnP connection (Moode) all of the music is played in whatever sample rate it was downloaded. You can also have Audirvana upsample music but I bypass that feature.

here’s a thing, I’m using a MacBook Pro with an Aune S8 reference dac and have roon, qobuz, tidal & apple but the thing that’s i’m trying to determ is what’s going on when I do the following:

open Audio midi setup
select Aune S8
change output to 2ch 32-bit integer 768.0 kHz

the DAC is displaying/playing PCM 768

it sounds superb (into my EAR859 & ProAc Response 1sc’s + x2 Rel quake, all cables Tellurium Q) I’m assuming that the MacBook Pro is upsampling?
 

Headchef

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here’s a thing, I’m using a MacBook Pro with an Aune S8 reference dac and have roon, qobuz, tidal & apple but the thing that’s i’m trying to determ is what’s going on when I do the following:

open Audio midi setup
select Aune S8
change output to 2ch 32-bit integer 768.0 kHz

the DAC is displaying/playing PCM 768

it sounds superb (into my EAR859 & ProAc Response 1sc’s + x2 Rel quake, all cables Tellurium Q) I’m assuming that the MacBook Pro is upsampling?

looking into the OS X documentation it’s using the DAC’s XMOS clock to convert the sample rate, hmmmm

“hardware sample rate converter is turned on if the audio samples coming in are PCM and formatted according to the international standard IEC 60958-3”
 

dpippel

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Set up your apps to use the Aune S8 in exclusive mode to bypass the macOS mixer and send a bitperfect stream to the device.
 

Headchef

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It is. Audio/midi setting will do a global upsample to that rate.

i suppose, in reply to both you and dpippel the question is, what better? The exclusive “bit perfect” output (although Roon seems to upsample then down sample etc using RAAT or whatever it’s called, or is it better to have say tidal playing a master file then OSX passing it to the DAC using the DAC’s XMOS clock?
 

Jimbob54

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i suppose, in reply to both you and dpippel the question is, what better? The exclusive “bit perfect” output (although Roon seems to upsample then down sample etc using RAAT or whatever it’s called, or is it better to have say tidal playing a master file then OSX passing it to the DAC using the DAC’s XMOS clock?

Whichever is most convenient for how you want it to work. I would be amazed if anyone could reliably tell which by ear if neither route is applying any DSP.

Roon shouldnt sample up and down if not applying DSP
 

Headchef

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Whichever is most convenient for how you want it to work. I would be amazed if anyone could reliably tell which by ear if neither route is applying any DSP.

Roon shouldnt sample up and down if not applying DSP
Roon seems to do all sorts of odd stuff if you click that little coloured jewel icon thing during playback, actually I gave up on Roon earlier and opted to use tidal directly which might have sounded better than it rid via Roon?!?
 

Jimbob54

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Roon seems to do all sorts of odd stuff if you click that little coloured jewel icon thing during playback, actually I gave up on Roon earlier and opted to use tidal directly which might have sounded better than it rid via Roon?!?

I have clicked on the little jewel, frequentiy. But you're going to have to post a screen grab or similar as Ive never seen "odd stuff" in my chain that isnt easily explained.
 

dpippel

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i suppose, in reply to both you and dpippel the question is, what better? The exclusive “bit perfect” output (although Roon seems to upsample then down sample etc using RAAT or whatever it’s called, or is it better to have say tidal playing a master file then OSX passing it to the DAC using the DAC’s XMOS clock?
I gravitate to the "simpler is better" philosophy. If I can pump the data stream directly to the DAC and let it do all the work instead of having macOS massaging things in between, that's all good IMO. Can you hear a difference? Probably not.

1625452918001.png
 
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Hey All
I have recently purchased an RME ADI-2 fs direct from rme-shop.com and am super pleased with the unit.
I was hoping those who might have EQ settings for the following headphones could please share: (using the parametric EQ on the RME)
1. Audeze LCD-2 Fazor Vegan Pads
2. Beyerdynamic DT880 600 Ohm New Pads
3. Sennheiser HD650 Dekoni Velour Pads
4. Philips X2HR

Cheers
 

Veri

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Hey All
I have recently purchased an RME ADI-2 fs direct from rme-shop.com and am super pleased with the unit.
I was hoping those who might have EQ settings for the following headphones could please share: (using the parametric EQ on the RME)
1. Audeze LCD-2 Fazor Vegan Pads
2. Beyerdynamic DT880 600 Ohm New Pads
3. Sennheiser HD650 Dekoni Velour Pads
4. Philips X2HR

Cheers
Start out with this list :)
https://old.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/list_of_presets_rme_adi-2
 
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