My Fulla is noisy as Schitt...

Discussion in 'Headphone Amplifiers and Combo (DAC/Amp) Units' started by shipsupt, Nov 7, 2016.

  1. GoodEnoughGear

    GoodEnoughGear Evil Dr. Shultz‎

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    Flip it into inflight mode to see if the radios are interfering. I am guessing you're at least on wifi...
     
  2. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Ah, yes... that's the one. It brings back memories. Or, rather, nightmares!

    My bad PC had huge amounts of red. It did not affect the on-board, but any other interface suffered severe dropouts, actual moments of silence in the sound, regularly. Utterably unlistenable and useless for any level of Fi.
     
  3. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    For starters... this doesn't look great! And I'm not surprised...

    [​IMG]
     
  4. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Certainly doesn't :eek:
     
  5. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    It only took a little tweaking and troubleshooting to fix my problem.

    I certainly should have followed through with some actual troubleshooting, and someday I will because I like the little Fulla.

    But instead, I took a slightly less traditional approach.

    Step 1, remove Fulla.
    [​IMG]

    Step 2

    Install WireWorld USB cables to Wyrd and then to NAD 51 DAC.
    Make balanced connection to STAX SRM-717 (Romy said I should spend a little time with this amp and the ESP/950)
    Connect Koss ESP/950 to my melon...
    [​IMG]

    Results: No more noise issue. Great sound at the office.

    Kidding aside... I appreciate the information shared here and I will report any findings on the Fulla when I get a chance to test it at home.
     
  6. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    I was getting ready to throw the Fulla into my bag to bring it home to test it when it dawned on me that I could easily do a quick check just by plugging it into the Wyrd. Bingo! My laptop USB bus must be pretty crap. That little Wyrd cleaned things up nicely. No more noise.

    My next step for the office rig will be to set up a dedicated source of some kind to avoid the issue completely.
     
  7. numbersixx

    numbersixx Friend

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    Heh. I see you went for the Ripley setup...

    "And I say we take off and nuke the entire rig from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. ..."
     
  8. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    Unfortunately, the 717 is acting up. One channel is intermittently cutting out. I'm going to bring another amp tomorrow and replace it so I can put it on the bench and see if I can't figure out what's going on. I hate dealing with the old STAX boards in these amps. Hopefully, it's a simple fix, but time will tell.
     
  9. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    Forgot to reply to this: don't presume to be a mod. We pick mods with a set of very specific criteria. It's not your job to police the damn forum. if you have an issue, report a post, don't publicly try to shame someone in the future.
     
  10. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    Do you want me to send you a little DAC? I have a bunch of them. An original GOV2? If it's just sitting on your desk the crap enclosure won't bother you... too much.
     
  11. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    No, i'm cool. The Fulla is fine when downstream of the Wyrd and I'm going to bring in a Woo GES to replace the 717 while I troubleshoot it. It'll be fun to have a full blown tube amp in the office.

    Thank you sir for the kind offer!
     
  12. Conor Brennan

    Conor Brennan New

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    So I'm actually having the same issue. Did you ever find a solution that doesn't involve a high-end, expensive setup? I'm listening to stuff on my AFC and this noise is driving me crazy.

    Mine is a Fulla 2 but I seem to be having many of the same problems as the original had. I have the hiss, but I have a ton of other problems too. If music gets too loud it makes this awful staticky sound (It seems to occur on every note- ie, if listening to a song with a piano it seems to ebb. It makes more of the static and will shrink away until the next note, and then come back full force). So I have no idea what the problem is with this damn thing.


    I'm honestly considering getting the CTH + SDAC off massdrop because it's just nicer and probably will have a better sound than this.
     
  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Do you have other USB devices connected to the same bus? Depends on the computer, but I have other USB devices that won't work right (QA400, Focusrite, light-up keyboards, iFi Nano BL, etc.) if other USB stuff is plugged into the same internal hub. I presume this is because of power draw.

    What I usually do is find another USB port that isn't be shared or just unplugged other USB stuff.A lso, the Fulla 2 has another USB for additional power. Might want to try that, although it does add more wires.
     
  14. Conor Brennan

    Conor Brennan New

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    Nah, right now on a Surface pro 2 or 3, only one USB jack anyway. And it had issues on my normal computer too. And on computers where the only other USB devices I had plugged in were a mouse and keyboard. I wonder if it is just damn broken, might just need to send it in. I ain't got no idea what the problem with it is at this point.
     
  15. RedFuneral

    RedFuneral Facebook Friend

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    The simple man's test is to plug some headphones into the computer direct and listen to hear if it's same noise at play.

    My JDS labs OL DAC has this noise problem. Worse when moving the mouse or running the computer hsrd. About half as loud as using the onboard. I don't know if it's a cheap DAC problem or more specific to cheap AKM DACs. Sounds like werewjust lacking the filtering of better units and don't have the computer to get away with it.
     
  16. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Doubtful it's AKM because I've had these issues with DACs with other DA chipsets. It could be anything, any combination or computer or DAC. I tend to have these issues with lightweight portable computing gear or ancient laptops from from any variety of portable / transportable DACs / AIOs. I blame Windows and crappy drivers and in some cases not enough juice from the USB.

    P.S. Run the DPC latency checker or LatencyMon too. Maybe pr0n torrents to your encrypted portable drive are taking up too many cycles.
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2018
  17. mkozlows

    mkozlows Friend

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    Is "AFC" in this case "Aeon Flow Closed"? Because Fulla won't drive those satisfactorily -- the low impedance is apparently too much for it to handle and you'll get bursts of crackling static during peaks.
     
  18. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    That sounds like noise from the USB VBUS. Cheap USB receivers without electrical isolation will sometimes do that. There are plenty of ways to fix it, however, depending on the specifics. However, I'm not comfortable suggesting someone spend money trying to pimp that particular DAC in the first place, it may be better to start with a better DAC rather than throw good money after bad.
     
  19. RedFuneral

    RedFuneral Facebook Friend

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    No intentions to salvage it. It's my own fault really having cheaper out on my notherboardfor this build. I smoked my old CPU and upgraded to a Skylake chip grabbing the only DDR3 compatible board I could find. Turns out quality shielding & legacy compatibility tend to be mutually exclusive.

    The OL has the glare Marv noted of the EL in the budget DAC off, I don't think mods will fix that. I've sampled other DACs, only get noise with this one.
     
  20. Conor Brennan

    Conor Brennan New

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    I'll be back home tomorrow and will plug it all in there and see if it persists. If it does, I'll get back to ya.

    You caught me :/ Joking aside, I'll check those but I have no torrents.

    Is it really? I had no idea. Well I've been looking to upgrade for a while now, guess it's time to move up. I was under the impression that the thing could run these ok. Damn.
     

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