I spent a few hours with this unit today, and tried it with about 8 pairs of headphones. My setup was Macbook Pro -> Audirvana Plus v2 player -> rPAC
The unit is very simple - no display or indicators, just plug and play. Feels nice in the hand too, small but solid.
I was really pleased with the combination of the Audeze and the rPAC, which was articulate and perfectly balanced and natural. It had enough power to drive the Audeze and Beyerdynamic T5p easily but some phones needed maximum volume to get loud and I think it was the Hifiman HE 560 which just didn't get loud enough.
I only had time in the shop to compare it with one other DAC, the Asus Xonar Essence STU. I preferred the Arcam - it seemed more tonally balanced and overall more natural sounding.
UPDATE: Later I found out that it seems the rPAC can be made to work at up to 192kHz too. These are the instructions, but try this at your own risk. I have not tried it myself:
download the driver from: http://www.arcam.co.uk/ugc/tor/rpac/Software/rPAC_firmware_1.0.5_driver_1.61.0.zip
This software is Windows only.
Whilst holding down the volume up/down buttons plug in
the rPAC to a free usb port.
install the software downloaded above.
done.
Look in device manager and you will see that the
driver is now authored by ARCAM rather than by
Microsoft.
There is also a firmware update included in the
above package that may help with choppy audio
on Win8 (also Linux/OSX) machines
Hope this helps someone.
The unit is very simple - no display or indicators, just plug and play. Feels nice in the hand too, small but solid.
I was really pleased with the combination of the Audeze and the rPAC, which was articulate and perfectly balanced and natural. It had enough power to drive the Audeze and Beyerdynamic T5p easily but some phones needed maximum volume to get loud and I think it was the Hifiman HE 560 which just didn't get loud enough.
I only had time in the shop to compare it with one other DAC, the Asus Xonar Essence STU. I preferred the Arcam - it seemed more tonally balanced and overall more natural sounding.
UPDATE: Later I found out that it seems the rPAC can be made to work at up to 192kHz too. These are the instructions, but try this at your own risk. I have not tried it myself:
download the driver from: http://www.arcam.co.uk/ugc/tor/rpac/Software/rPAC_firmware_1.0.5_driver_1.61.0.zip
This software is Windows only.
Whilst holding down the volume up/down buttons plug in
the rPAC to a free usb port.
install the software downloaded above.
done.
Look in device manager and you will see that the
driver is now authored by ARCAM rather than by
Microsoft.
There is also a firmware update included in the
above package that may help with choppy audio
on Win8 (also Linux/OSX) machines
Hope this helps someone.
