L_To

Thanks to all the suggestions from everyone. I followed Chris's screen shots and set all system defaults the same as his. Then I closed down all other applications while iTunes is running, including Safari. Operating Mode is set as Normal. The HRx files are playing fine now. These HRx files were copied from the DVD into my hard drive and then added to my iTunes library. The only glitch I have is that I cannot add any artist, album or genre descriptions to these files in iTunes, not sure why. I have checked my system resources as suggested by Dave and I am using up 489M of my 512M RAM if I have both iTunes and Safari running. This may well be the culprit when I was playing the HRx files which likely called for more system resources and caused the sound to distort. I plan to upgrade my MacBook Pro to the Current version which has a minimum RAM of 2G. Having played with the Weiss DAC2 all weekend, I can report that it is playing in the same league as my Esoteric UX-3 universal player which had a MSRP of $8500. The DAC2 may even have a slight edge over the Esoteric in terms of air and transparency. Not too shabby for a $3000 DAC. I don't know if the DAC2 will sound even better as it breaks in. However, I am happy with my purchase so far. Louis

Hi Chris and Ted, Thanks for the suggestion. I reviewed the screen shots and it appeared that the version Chris had was 3.1.1.523, which had option to adjust buffer size. My software version is 3.4.0.5254 and has no such adjustment. Would using the Operation Mode: Normal, Safe Level 1, 2 or 3 do anything? Louis

Based on reviews and recommendations from this forum, I just upgraded my DAC from a Benchmark DAC1 USB to the Weiss DAC2. I am running iTunes on a MacBook Pro OS X 10.4.11, 2 GHz, 512 RAM. Setting up the Weiss DAC2 was simple, load the supplied software, plug in the firewire (2 feet long) and I was up and running in 5 minutes. Cold out of the box, it was obvious that the Weiss DAC2 plays in a different league than the Benchmark. The Weiss is crisp, clean, open, superb soundstage, shimmering highs and tight bass, yet completely natural sounding, very nice unit. I played both 44.1 kHz and 24/96 files with no problem whatsoever. However, when I loaded the HRx Sampler CD that came with the unit into iTunes, I was getting distortion when playing these 24/176.4 files. The distortion sounded like buzzing noise. I thought that maybe the high output of the Weiss was overloading my integrated amp, which is a Pass Labs INT-150 whose input presumes 2 volt input, the input buffers will overload at 7V rms. I used the output level trim rotary switch to dial back the output but it did not eliminate the distortion at all. At times the 24/176.4 files would play beautifully and I can see the potential of these high rez files, but the buzzing sound does come in frequent enough to interfere with the enjoyment of the music. I was also getting a few dropouts here and there, which I never did experience with my Benchmark DAC1 USB. Any ideas as to what may be wrong here? Maybe Daniel can chime in as well. Thanks for the help. Louis