There seems to be something strange with the music reproduction of my BIII PRO. Let's see if you can catch this.

Since I installed the upgrade from the BIII to the BIII SE PRO I found some real improvements to the overall music reproduction but I had some doubts.

Loose Yourself to Dance of Daft Punk got some strange volume layers during the 'Common' tekst part.
But than I was listening to Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon man (my father played that song since I was born) and my suspicion became true; there are actually tones (data) missing in the music.
At 0:20 in the song a higher flute tone starts but you can only hear the echo of it somewhere in the back. At 1:16 a tockle starts of which again you can hear some in the background only but it should be expressively up in front.
So strange.

What did I do to isolate this strange behaviour?

Normal setup: Qobuz (Source) --> Volumio (UPNP\DLNA) --> Allo Rpi USBridge (USB out) --> WaveIO (I2s out) --> DAC BIII SE PRO

Alternative 1: Qobuz (Source) --> Volumio (Airplay) --> Allo Rpi USBridge (USB out) --> WaveIO (I2s out) --> DAC BIII SE PRO

Alternative 2: Qobuz (Source) --> Apple TV (Airplay) --> Chinese Toslink to I2S --> DAC BIII SE PRO

All the same results.
When playing the song via the Qobuz App on the phone the instruments are clearly te hear.
I do have quite large U.fl cables installed in the test setup but the music reproduces without a glitch.
I have changed the 3 I2s cables to rule them out.

This leaves only two options

1: The DAC if faulty
2: The Mercury Pre Amp is faulty

You would not think an analogue (pre-amp) stage does skip information. That would be 'possibly' something for a DAC to do if at all...

Russ, Brian, any clou at all?...


Edit:
The flute and toggle are on the RH channel

Edited by user 3 years ago  | Reason: Not specified

Hi

I shipped a few DACs with the wrong firmware. I thought I had backtracked too all the affected orders, but seen to have missed yours. I'll send you the correct firmware tomorrow morning. Sorry for the mix-up.

New Firmware Chip received.
That's much better

Thx!