After powering the unit up for the first time I experienced a couple of issues. First, there was no audio out of the passive speaker and the gain level was so high as to hear the noise floor. I checked all of the connection to no avail and then powered down the unit. After powering the DUT back up there were no more issues. I haven't tried BT, only the 3.5mm unbalanced input. Listening to my Classic Rock Station off air I found the sound to be well balanced and the level of gain to be very high, (loud without much input). They sound clean with detail and most certainly have wide dispersion. I don't hang my hat on any speakers without giving them time to break in, which is what I'm doing today, (07-06). One thing to note, after a few hours of playing at a med-low level the powered speaker was very hot at the bottom. Far more so than I would have expected and close to a burn potential to people, (I don't keep my finger on something hot so I'm ok). The plastic may not...
Jul 6, 2023
Here is another way to go, it should meet your price point @ $115, and it will move you far ahead of where you might be heading now. Plain simple; PC makers are not going to put devices into products that have no direct benefit to sales, period, the std. DAC's & op-amps suck. Plugging your new cans into a plain, no nice sound card or decent sound hardware built-in on a high end MOB, with some level of EMI/RFI shielding, in a PC, will simply disappoint, you will think all these audio folks are BS.
Korg isn't seen much in this audiophile market, because they are focused on designing and selling to musicians. They simply don't have the right marketing hooks into this crazy wooden-box-of-dirt is an earth ground market. They have made a uniquely paired product, software & hardware that can take you right front row,, now, at a steal. They even partnered with Phonon to make a custom set of cans matched to the 100m DAC/amp. You benefit here because of the market acceptance wall they did not make it over and the hardware is selling for a pittance of what it is truly worth. MD are you listening?? Hopefully they will re-double their efforts and bring lots of swag... to try again to take on the wall... they have insight that can benefit this market. If you can use a PC, you can use their software - after a bit,, or not, it will work with what you feed it, albeit at low rez. With the custom app you can up-sample your heart away, play bit-perfect, or you can even degrade, "down-sample" to play on antiques, you know period music, the 80's...
All we are doing here is trying to reproduce the art that musicians make, as best we can, as they hear it. I have been searching for this capability, worked on the systems making the first CD's. Still have CD's at home coated in floor wax to protect the Al we had just sputtered onto the data side. I now have a Korg 100 that I feed into a modified tube amp into HD700's, but had mis-loaded the app so it was not the "unlocked" full version, limited to 48 kHz and 44.1 kHz quality. Didn't want to play with re-loading it, so I listened to it for a few days,, it was ok. I got a DSD 2.8 file of Steely Dan aja, not a rip of a disk, the real thing (disks have issues), so I re-loaded the app, "unlocked" it,, and listened to aja in "native" DSD 2.8...... not DoP,,, yes, an epiphany ... we can get there...
Get this Korg, get some DSD or 24/192 files of "your" music, listen, and write back...
http://www.korg.com/us/products/audio/ds_dac_100m/
https://www.amazon.com/Korg-DSDAC100M-Digital-Analog-Converter/dp/B00GTIUX0Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1506604885&sr=8-2&keywords=korg+dac+ds+100
The cheapest version is the portable 100m above; the next up is the 100 that has RCA and balanced XLR outs, the next 10R $ can take your vinyl to DSD to preserve it, and the vinyl. Oh, get decent silver, plated is fine, USB cable too, $ well spent, if not now, next, there is no end game ;) I plan on getting the 100m to take on the road with the Phonon (want closed for noisy hotels) matched cans...