A big ego soon

[Deleted User]

Went ahead and ordered Emotiva's new
32 BIT/384K USB Digital to Analog Converter
"Big Ego" DAC
fell into some money and thought why not while they are
on sale? The wife should be pleased as I'll do more headphone
listening. (at least that is the plan)
Here is the manual for anyone interested;
https://emotiva.com/resources/manuals/BigEgo_manual_07.pdf

msg

nice! what will you be feeding into it? something across that Black Cat Veloce, I imagine?!?

mhardy6647

Boy did I misinterpret this thread based on the title -- my knee-jerk response would've been "heck, I've had a big ego for years, decades even!"

:- )

[Deleted User]

How are my Altecs holding up BTW?

decal

Ego is a muscle, just add fame and watch it swell.....Warren Haynes

[Deleted User]

My big ego is set up in the mancave.
Setup on my old iMac was easy.
Setup goes;
iMac to long usb cord I got somewhere
to the big ego
optical out to the Denon AVR for starters.
Chose Wishbone Ash Argus as the first files.
Hmm, getting the occasional dropout.
Otherwise sounds good.

[Deleted User]

Stalled for tonight. Need to work w/ a newer mac or ipad/iphone

[Deleted User]

I bought the $9.99 bit perfect plug in today and
my first download from HDtracks. I chose
Led Zeppelin II as it was the first LP I bought for myself.
Played it thru the Ego symmetrically up sampled to 384K
As hoped it blew the built in 88k away.
This is just a toy for me, but a fun one!

tonyb

You should use the analog outs to the Denon, pure direct mode. Digital still has the Denon doing the conversion.

[Deleted User]

Thanks Tony. I did figure out to try pure direct, but still some dropouts.
The fun yesterday was on the work MacBook Pro to Grado headphones
so I could hear some difference
The up-sampling wasn't perfect all the time, but still great.
If anyone would like to suggest some 32 bit and/or
> 96k downloads to try, that would also be great!

My Ego came w/ a felt pouch but I re-purposed two old Telex
zipper pouches for it and the headphones. Flash upgrades at
parties

tonyb

Red, it's really a USB dac, so I'd imagine the best performance will be by using that output. Using the digital output makes it one big upsampler, that's it. Using the analog outputs allows you to take advantage of the Ego's dac and forgo the Denons.

[Deleted User]

Thanks again tonyb!

[Deleted User]

so next up;
I hooked up the Ego to the Bellari VP130.
Fail. W/Out the grounding from the turntable,
I got hum city. This game will have to be postponed.

voltz

rednedtugent wrote: »

so next up;
I hooked up the Ego to the Bellari VP130.
Fail. W/Out the grounding from the turntable,
I got hum city. This game will have to be postponed.

Ok Red ...don't make me smack you up side the head your hooking up a analog signal to a DAC? your just trying to have to much fun with theat thing aren't ya

[Deleted User]

Kind of;
Computers USB to the Ego
Ego's analog line out (it has this and a headphone jack as well) to the VP130
VP130's headphone jack out. The headphone jack works fine as long
as the ground to the TT is there.

voltz

ahh I forgot its a headphone amp also ..my bad forgive me LOL yes the Ego and all dac have a analog out that you send to the preamp or headphone amp ...I'll smack myself over the head

[Deleted User]

undaunted, our fearless audiopile hooks up the
analog out of his Big Ego to the Denon and fires up
his only hi-res files. Fiddling with the digital filters
and the default settings on the Mac he is ready to rock.
Les Paul slung low he is duck walking across the mancave!
Then, it happened.
The wife showed up.

Fiddling some more I realized I had bitperfect upsampling to 88.2 khz.
Set it to "Do Not Upsample" as to let the Ego his job. Listening to
Steely Dan. Nice.

[Deleted User]

Spent a lot of time with different music using the line out tonight
and it has a nice full sound to it. The Denon is the only amp in the
cave right now so there is that. You can set the digital filters on
the fly.

tonyb

Do you have the Denon set to direct bypass or equivalent ? Try turning the upsample on with the same songs and get a feel for what it does. You may like it, maybe not too, either way you'll gain some preferences.

[Deleted User]

Good suggestion. Turning off upsampling on the puredirect software seems to have fixed the dropout problem. I've been listening for an hour w/out one. When it his
a hi-rez file the input on the Ego changes to the correct rate as hoped. When set up
this way, I don't seem to be able to select a filter. So it is just get it above the 88k sample rate?

Set it to pure direct from direct on the Denon just to play...
I'm just about out if time.

[Deleted User]

Downloaded Supertramp 'Crime of the Century' (remastered) today and I'm listening
to it now (lunch). I wanted to try out 24/192 files. I can only compare it to vinyl and memory but this sounds nice