I e-mailed them about the lack of granularity of volume adjustment and got a really quick knowledgeable response (not a canned cut & paste response) and it's North American based.Īlso keep in mind if you are using the USB input it is limited to 24bit/96kHz so ensure that the Windows sound settings are set appropriately. If swapping USB cable/port doesn't fix it, try contacting their support, they're actually quite good. I only use the optical input on mine, but I remember testing it with USB input and mine sounded fine.

I'm assuming it's setting related, i've tried different bit rates within the sound properties box but it happens across the ones I've tried and across all media players =/Īre you using the included stupid short USB cable or another USB cable? Try swapping to a different USB cable and/or another USB port (preferablly a non-USB 3.0 port). Everything sounds beautiful until SNAP HISSSSSSSSSS for 2 seconds or so. I bought this but I get random static pops and hisses in windows while playing music. They will sound a tad bit better with a more powerful amp, but nowhere near the night and day difference as with the AKGs. If you have some easier to drive headphones like the Sennheiser HD598 from the amazon.ca sale last year, those will work fine with the D1 alone. Now I use the D1 as a DAC to feed the Asgard 2, then headphones. I was severely under-driving them when I was just using the D1 by itself. The AKG K702/K701/Q701 are notoriously power hungry so I didn't know how good they truly sounded until I got the E09k and later the Asgard 2. Here's an short list of power outputs of amps & amp/dac combos I own: AKG K702 65th Anniversary) they may not sound as good as they can be when driven by a more powerful headphone amp. The only negative is that the built-in 'headphone amp' isn't very powerful so if you have hard to drive headphones (e.g. It is definitely an upgrade from the onboard Realtek for music listening, PLUS it has SPDIF optical in, which is useful you want to use it for virtual headphone surround for PC gaming if you have a soundcard that can do Dolby Headphone or CMSS-3D headphone. Yeah, $130 is pretty good, and damn, I didn't know BB/FS carried Audioengine stuff.

Audioengine d1 dac hd 598