Well it seems I jumped into this far too soon for my own good. After looking at the advertising site we know as youtube I was armed with little actual information to make a decision about a DAC to use as a preamp/headphone amp between a Mac and 2 mono amps. So I used what little actual information I had to go the Fosi route of the ZH3 and (2) ZA3 amps. What I should have done was come here first and then several other forums for second opinions to ensure whether I was getting what I thought I was. So while I haven't actually received the gear yet I've managed to find through forums and from Fosi themselves that the ZH3 won't do what I thought it would. So now I'm back to square one and combing through forums to find information from folks who aren't getting paid to advertise for these companies. I'm sure there are plenty here who do but there should also be true end users that will honestly answer a question based on experience rather than how it affects their income. So to that end, here goes:
As I posted elsewhere here I believed the ZH3 would take USB audio from a Mac, let me control the volume in the DAC/Preamp section and send it out to the ZA3's which are on the other side of the room via XLR, hence the need for a DAC/preamp with XLR outputs. In skim reading through the media material on all of these DAC/Preamps it seems to me that certain features, or lack thereof, are deliberately not put into the advertising media. So after looking at several Mfg's and relative models I've found that none of them will specify whether the volume control on their device will control the volume levels at the XLR outputs. What I need most is a DAC/preamp that can auto sense, accept and convert audio files from 16 bit 44kHz up to at least 24 bit 192kHz with the ability to adjust the volume output on the XLR outputs. This seems to be some sort of impossibility from what I can tell and if so it must be a design issue with these things. Now Fosi tells me if I'm willing to use only the AUX setting I can achieve this. But this comes at the expense of not being able to utilize any of the actual features of the preamp like EQ, Dynamics and what's ultimately worse, not be able to play anything above 16 bit 48kHz since UAC 2 seems to be unavailable in AUX mode. That just seems wrong like a design issue since output can be controlled by the knob but it won't route anything through the necessary chip or circuitry to allow higher bit rates or EQ.
So what I'd like to run by the people here is, is there a DAC/Preamp that will accomplish what I seek without spending thousands of dollars if at all? I looked at the Fiio K13 R2R media info and videos and again none of them say that they will not do this, rather they all say you can control the volume on it and they have XLR and RCA outputs. That's not telling you that you can't control volume at the XLR output. Whether the info is correct or not I'd leave to other end users but just doing a search via DuckDuckGo returns an AI answer that says NO, you can't control the volume at the XLR outputs on the Fiio K13 R2R. Sad that I had to find that out from an AI source sifting through other forums but these Mfgs don't want to tell people that, I guess to make sales before the buyer finds out.
Anyway, if anyone has any recommendations that can fit the bill and stay reasonably low in cost as this is just a Mac sending audio to 2 speakers I'd be much obliged.
As I posted elsewhere here I believed the ZH3 would take USB audio from a Mac, let me control the volume in the DAC/Preamp section and send it out to the ZA3's which are on the other side of the room via XLR, hence the need for a DAC/preamp with XLR outputs. In skim reading through the media material on all of these DAC/Preamps it seems to me that certain features, or lack thereof, are deliberately not put into the advertising media. So after looking at several Mfg's and relative models I've found that none of them will specify whether the volume control on their device will control the volume levels at the XLR outputs. What I need most is a DAC/preamp that can auto sense, accept and convert audio files from 16 bit 44kHz up to at least 24 bit 192kHz with the ability to adjust the volume output on the XLR outputs. This seems to be some sort of impossibility from what I can tell and if so it must be a design issue with these things. Now Fosi tells me if I'm willing to use only the AUX setting I can achieve this. But this comes at the expense of not being able to utilize any of the actual features of the preamp like EQ, Dynamics and what's ultimately worse, not be able to play anything above 16 bit 48kHz since UAC 2 seems to be unavailable in AUX mode. That just seems wrong like a design issue since output can be controlled by the knob but it won't route anything through the necessary chip or circuitry to allow higher bit rates or EQ.
So what I'd like to run by the people here is, is there a DAC/Preamp that will accomplish what I seek without spending thousands of dollars if at all? I looked at the Fiio K13 R2R media info and videos and again none of them say that they will not do this, rather they all say you can control the volume on it and they have XLR and RCA outputs. That's not telling you that you can't control volume at the XLR output. Whether the info is correct or not I'd leave to other end users but just doing a search via DuckDuckGo returns an AI answer that says NO, you can't control the volume at the XLR outputs on the Fiio K13 R2R. Sad that I had to find that out from an AI source sifting through other forums but these Mfgs don't want to tell people that, I guess to make sales before the buyer finds out.
Anyway, if anyone has any recommendations that can fit the bill and stay reasonably low in cost as this is just a Mac sending audio to 2 speakers I'd be much obliged.
