Question on setting up external dac/accurate headphone monitoring

[ViciousBliss]

Hi everyone,

I've been reading this forum for a while and decided to finally join. Great information here. So I'm trying to use my hifimees9023 dac and Pro Tools currently won't get past "initializing audio engine" if its plugged in. Just gives me the alert about ASIO not working and tells me to quit if I want. Reaper boots up with it and allows me to select the dac as the output. So I'm wondering if it's just not compatible with PT. I've tried setting it as the default sound device, disabling the other sound devices, setting it up in ASIO, changing the sample rate, pretty much every piece of advice I could find through searches on the web.

The first time I ever tried to use it with PT, it actually did boot up and allow me to select the ASIO panel and change to this dac. But then PT gave me the same message about ASIO not working and asked if I wanted to quit.

http://hifimediy.com/sabre-dac-uae23

I'm not using an audio interface as my Zoom R16 doesn't work with PT. Was thinking about getting an Audient Id14. However, I have no idea how accurate their headphone out is or if it can drive an AKG K701. I know it's output impedance is over 30 and after reading nwavguy's site, I generally try to use stuff with impedance ratings as close to 0 as possible. My goal is just to have accurate headphone monitoring.

This dac is supposed to be neutral and almost like a clone of the odac, which has verified measurements along with the O2 headphone amp(and as I understand it, it's very rare for headphone gear manufacturers to post much of any measurements). The advice I read on here about using the Redline monitor and Sonarworks Reference 3 was very helpful. Toneboosters' Isone is a little hard to figure out. The K701 was already pretty neutral but those plug-ins helped even more. The K701 seem quite good for mixing because everything has room and because of how ruthlessly revealing they can be.

At this juncture I'm just running an audioquest Evergreen 3.5 cable from the computer's headphone jack to the O2. When I check mixes with my JBL LSR305's that are running from a Nanopatch that's hooked into the speaker jack via 3.5 to 1/4 adapter, things seem very consistent. I had to switch both monitors to +2 treble to get that consistency(with the other settings my mixes came out bass light). I've had the 701s for years so I've got a very good idea what professionally produced music should sound like on them and my mixes translate pretty well so long as they sound good on the 701 when it's plugged into the hifime dac and O2. The JBL's are almost too forgiving. Just about everything sounds awesome on them. I'd mix without headphones and play a cd of them in the car and a lot of the time it would sound limp in comparison to the LSR305 in default or -2 Bass.

There's definitely a difference between using the dac and not, but it's a lot less with the Sonarworks and 112db plug-ins enabled. I have no idea what the stats are on this computer's headphone output. Or how much its impedance matters after plugging it into the O2.

Thanks again for all the great info and I look forward to hearing everyone's current thoughts on headphone monitoring.

[chicken_neck]

Same kind of thing here with a FIIO external DAC I like to use with my Grado S80s. Were you able to find a way to encourage Pro Tools to see the device?

[Top Jimmy]

Be aware that Pro Tools chokes on using a device that doesn't declare both input and output paths. Create an aggregate interface that has both ins and outs and pro Tools should be happy.