An audiophile friend has generously loaned me his new Weiss Firewire DAC2 – the pro version (and significantly cheaper version) of the Weiss Minerva Firewire DAC. Aren't I lucky!
I was pleased with the sound I was achieving with an Apogee Duet but the Weiss is better again.
However, once or twice every hour of listening through the Weiss I experience momentary pauses or dropouts. I have never experienced this with the Apogee Duet in the same system.
The Weiss is connected via a 1.8 m shielded Belkin Firewire cable to an Apple PowerBook G4 (Mac OS 10.5.5, 1 GHZ, 1.25 GB RAM), running iTunes 8.0.1. The PowerBook is connected via Cat 6 ethernet cable to an Apple Airport Extreme to which is also attached a LaCie Ethernet Disk Mini on which the music files are stored. Airport is turned off on the PowerBook – I am using only hardwire connections. I always set Audio MIDI Setup to the sample rate of the files being played, having quit iTunes to do so. I have tried setting the buffer in iTunes to large or small but this does not seem to make any difference to the frequency of dropouts.
Any ideas anyone?
Posts: 3144
Hi Leigh - I'm not sure if
Hi Leigh - I'm not sure if the DAC2 has the same config as the Minerva but I'll say this anyway. The Minerva has settings for Isochronous Buffering that make a big difference. Here is a screenshot http://www.computeraudiophile.com/files/minerva/minerva-app-02-large.jpg
If the DAC2 has similar settings you may want to play with them. Also, have you powered the DAC2 off and on? I know of two instances where this solved an issue with the Minerva (pre release version).
Chris Connaker
Founder
Computer Audiophile
Posts: 18
professional version of Weiss DAC?
Where does one find the professional version, and how much does it cost?
How does the professional version differ from the consumer "Minerva?" Are the differences merely cosmetic, or are there substantive differences?
Thanks.
David
Posts: 10
Thanks Chris. I had a look
Thanks Chris. I had a look at System Preferences. There is no Weiss panel. I opened Audio MIDI Setup and clicked on "Configure Device" with no results. When the Weiss driver was loaded I was unaware of having to load anything else. Perhaps there is still something further to load from the Weiss CD. I'll have to check with my friend - he has the CD.
Posts: 49
control panel
There is a problem with the current driver with PowerPC based Apple computers. The control panel shows up in the applications folder, but when one attempts to start it, it shows an error message.
We should have a new driver / control panel ready in a few days.
Playing music works usually, the sampling rate can be set in the Audio Midi application. Why there are dropouts I can't tell offhand, maybe there is another application which runs in the background interfering?
Or maybe it is because of that problem described above. Don't know yet.
Daniel
www.weiss.ch
Posts: 25
Question for Daniel
Daniel,
Could you please tell us how does the Weiss Dac 2 sound different than the Minerva? I am only interested in sound differences, but not the technical differences. Thanks.
Chai
Posts: 49
Minerva vs DAC2
Hello Chai
Minerva and DAC2 sound the same.
Daniel
www.weiss.ch
Posts: 25
Daniel
Is there any Weiss service center in United States currently? If not, where is the current service center location?
Thanks. I am very tempted to get the IMAC > Weiss DAC2!
Posts: 49
Weiss Service
So far we have two service people, one in NYC and one in Homestead, Florida.
Daniel
www.weiss.ch