[LeonidK]

The Marantz is a bit smoothed over - on first listen it's pleasurable but the added definition and realism from the RME (with better headamp) can be difficult to unhear. As an AIO though Crane Song Solaris might be better option with it's discrete headamp (but you don't get the EQ).

You might also consider Mojo 2 with Poly (or even better a good usb to optical bridge) which imo is a touch more lush and organic vs RME and betters it for full size headphones due to it's discrete amp (+ you get a nice but less flexible dsp EQ).. All the more impressive considering it's cigarette pack size.

IMO the RME seems to be better suited for nearfield speaker listening. It's flattens the stage a bit, but with nearfields that's not a problem, and it's smooth mids and detail highlights make for an almost architectural drawing reconstruction of the audio and in close proximity it makes listening both pleasurable and analytical but not shouty.

Do you still have any of these 3 devices? To me the sound of Mojo 2 (used as a DAC) is overly smoothed, it lacks texture and precision RME has, on the other hand RME is not as coherent and it has terrible soundstage. How does Marantz compare to these two in terms of instrument separation and detail? Is the sound better defined than the Mojo 2? I'm looking for something in-between and I can get Marantz for ~300 EUR, but if it performs badly resolution-wise it might be too much of a compromise. I would use it in a speaker setup.

 

[emilsoft]

Do you still have any of these 3 devices? To me the sound of Mojo 2 (used as a DAC) is overly smoothed, it lacks texture and precision RME has, on the other hand RME is not as coherent and it has terrible soundstage. How does Marantz compare to these two in terms of instrument separation and detail? Is the sound better defined than the Mojo 2? I'm looking for something in-between and I can get Marantz for ~300 EUR, but if it performs badly resolution-wise it might be too much of a compromise. I would use it in a speaker setup.

I don’t have the marantz. The RME with linear power supply is a bit better than Mojo 2 (both used with good usb - optical bridge Wyred4sound) as a dac. It’s a bit smoother and more controlled. The Mojo 2 can get a bit forward and aggressive .

If you have hard to drive cans RME is better it has more control, there’s more punch and dynamic swing. If you have iems the RME is also better as it’s 3.5mm out is absolute lying stellar. This is with linear supply. Without it, the cards may be turned as the RME gets a bit ringy and steely sounding which is irksome where the Mojo doesn’t exhibit this.

 

[LeonidK]

@emilsoft it's surprising how different our perception is, I perceive Mojo 2 as much smoother, rounder and easier to listen (it's less energetic and rhythmic), the stage is more in your face though, maybe that's what you describe as aggressive. I actually felt RME was more grainy. For some time I thought I liked Mojo 2 more, but after a while its blurred sound started to annoy me. Btw. I could not hear any difference using Sbooster LPSU.
Even though I don't believe RME is as spectacular as many people think, I find it hard to believe Marantz could be a better dac, it seems kinda difficult to resell.

 

[emilsoft]

@emilsoft it's surprising how different our perception is, I perceive Mojo 2 as much smoother, rounder and easier to listen (it's less energetic and rhythmic), the stage is more in your face though, maybe that's what you describe as aggressive. I actually felt RME was more grainy. For some time I thought I liked Mojo 2 more, but after a while its blurred sound started to annoy me. Btw. I could not hear any difference using Sbooster LPSU.
Even though I don't believe RME is as spectacular as many people think, I find it hard to believe Marantz could be a better dac, it seems kinda difficult to resell.

There's a lot of factors and gotchas on how the device are used.

Mojo 2 + HD800S - a bit lean/hard, sound lacks depth (even with the tone controls). RME is more efortless but still can exhibit a little treble ring.

Mojo 2 + Andromeda - Mojo 2 on low volume which is required for Andro suffers a bit as it lack dynamics.. the sound is a bit hard, lacks smoothness and flow (the Gryphon is much better here with Andro on 4.4mm). RME also.

Mojo 2 + Sennheiser IE200 - stellar, it's got very tight control and gives good dynamics and smoothness. IE200 requires quite a bit more volume and Mojo does better with more gain.

Mojo 2 + most other sensitive balanced armature iems - a bit hard, similar to the Andromeda

Mojo 2 + dynamic drivers generally fares much better. no sure why.

Mojo 2 line out to neutral speaker - holographic imaging, better than RME here.. not as obvious over headphones however. RME is still fine but is a bit too sanitised as in there's nuances between the sounds (room/reverb) which are glossed in comparison to the main elements which are hyper focused. Difficult to describe. Apogee Element for example has great holographic lifelike imaging, but has almost bit of a soft diffuse glow around everything ensuring that no details are hyperfocused and taking all the attention - this is good imo.

If you are tethered to an Apple machine, I would still recommend the Apogee Element over the RME for a more pleasurable sound (but still detailed and clean).. that is if you don't need remote/display. I haven't heard the Apogee Symphony Desktop but I would put money on the table it has a sexier sound over the RME.

Saying all this the RME is very very good if you feed it good source and linear power, use it with speakers and IEMs, it is very competitive in the 1000$ price range for a d/s dac. If Apogee had similar features for their DACs then they would be my preference sound wise however.

Mojo 2 is very competitive if fed with good power/source, it's shocking that it can be used in a full size speaker setup comfortably replacing an RME of other full size desktop dac. It just can't quite drive large headphones it lacks the depth/sub bass (lack of current/voltage - not an eq problem)

 

[Vocalpoint]

All

Been enjoying my ADI-2 for about a year now. I use it with J.River Media Center as the main audio interface/headphone amp (via USB) for my personal desktop workstation. I am running Windows 10 22H2 with the very latest ADi-2 driver set (June 2023)

Now - for all this time - when using the ADi-2 with J.River Media Center - all I can ever remember is the device being able to play EVERYTHING I could throw at it - in all possible sample rates and bit depths (44/16. 24/88.2, 24/96 etc) It would switch effortlessly between all different sample rates/bit depths with instant ease.

But yesterday - I was cruising around my FLAC library firing up different albums in different rates when JRMC suddenly started displaying its usual "Something went wrong with Playback" "Playback could not be started using..."

Which always means a driver issue. So off I go to check the driver that JRMC is using with the ADi-2. I was concerned to see only two specific RME drivers offered:

RME ADi-2 [WASAPI]
RME ADi-2 [Direct Sound]

Two MADIface choices:

MADIface Analog (1+2) (Kernel Streaming)
MADIface SPDIF (Kernel Streaming)

And a selection of what appear to be generic Windows choices:

Default Audio Device (WASAPI)
Default Audio Device (Direct Sound)

and finally, two JRMC choices

Disk Writer
Null Output

But NO ASIO option for the ADi-2 FS.

Now - for the life of me - I cannot remember if I ever had this driver option to choose - but on the other hand - I also thought I had been using the RME ADi-2 [WASAPI] driver option (In JRMC) all along and it usually had no issues playing back anything?

As soon as this started going south yesterday - I tested each and every one of the RME options above and exactly none of them can navigate FLAC files with different sample rates in JRMC - they all display the Playback error message. However - I could swear this was working beautifully up to about 6 weeks ago when I was poking around the library?

The last major change to this device was a driver/firmware update session on 7/28/23. As far as I can tell - this update (as all before it) worked perfectly.

Clearly something is not right here - but any ideas on why this is suddenly not working?

VP

 

[evhvis]

All

Been enjoying my ADI-2 for about a year now. I use it with J.River Media Center as the main audio interface/headphone amp (via USB) for my personal desktop workstation. I am running Windows 10 22H2 with the very latest ADi-2 driver set (June 2023)

Now - for all this time - when using the ADi-2 with J.River Media Center - all I can ever remember is the device being able to play EVERYTHING I could throw at it - in all possible sample rates and bit depths (44/16. 24/88.2, 24/96 etc) It would switch effortlessly between all different sample rates/bit depths with instant ease.

But yesterday - I was cruising around my FLAC library firing up different albums in different rates when JRMC suddenly started displaying its usual "Something went wrong with Playback" "Playback could not be started using..."

Which always means a driver issue. So off I go to check the driver that JRMC is using with the ADi-2. I was concerned to see only two specific RME drivers offered:

RME ADi-2 [WASAPI]
RME ADi-2 [Direct Sound]

Two MADIface choices:

MADIface Analog (1+2) (Kernel Streaming)
MADIface SPDIF (Kernel Streaming)

And a selection of what appear to be generic Windows choices:

Default Audio Device (WASAPI)
Default Audio Device (Direct Sound)

and finally, two JRMC choices

Disk Writer
Null Output

But NO ASIO option for the ADi-2 FS.

Now - for the life of me - I cannot remember if I ever had this driver option to choose - but on the other hand - I also thought I had been using the RME ADi-2 [WASAPI] driver option (In JRMC) all along and it usually had no issues playing back anything?

As soon as this started going south yesterday - I tested each and every one of the RME options above and exactly none of them can navigate FLAC files with different sample rates in JRMC - they all display the Playback error message. However - I could swear this was working beautifully up to about 6 weeks ago when I was poking around the library?

The last major change to this device was a driver/firmware update session on 7/28/23. As far as I can tell - this update (as all before it) worked perfectly.

Clearly something is not right here - but any ideas on why this is suddenly not working?

VP

ASIO should be an option if the drivers are working correctly and are started at windows startup. Try uninstalling, reboot and then installing the drivers again.

 

[G8torbyte]

@Vocalpoint, could it be USB connectivity dropping off? I've had it happen occasionally on my Windows PC and I've been using the RME ADI-2 DAC about 5 years.
I think the visibility of the "ASIO MADIface USB" drops from the list if USB is not connecting well. I have several USB devices loading on boot up and sometimes I need to swap ports when it seems one does not detect a device.

In case you are not aware, RME just released the new dashboard remote software interface for Mac and Windows PC which saves a lot of time adjusting settings.
See RME's forum announcement here: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=205246#p205246
Their manual is very nice in explaining all the functions but it can be tedious navigating the menus with twisting/mashing the little knobs. The new interface is much appreciated:

 

[Vocalpoint]

ASIO should be an option if the drivers are working correctly and are started at windows startup. Try uninstalling, reboot and then installing the drivers again.

Agreed. Is there any specific best practices out there to complete clean this device right off of the machine and start over?

If not - I will go with what I see in the ADI-2 DAC User Manual (Page 40) where it indicates to use Device Manager and do this:

I believe this should drop the device reference and all the drivers in one go?

VP

 

[Vocalpoint]

Update: Did a deep clean and reinstalled the device from scratch.

ASIO is back and JRMC is working normally.

Wish I knew why this driver just up and disappeared on its own.

Cheers

VP

 

[tiddlywinks]

@Vocalpoint, could it be USB connectivity dropping off? I've had it happen occasionally on my Windows PC and I've been using the RME ADI-2 DAC about 5 years.
I think the visibility of the "ASIO MADIface USB" drops from the list if USB is not connecting well. I have several USB devices loading on boot up and sometimes I need to swap ports when it seems one does not detect a device.

In case you are not aware, RME just released the new dashboard remote software interface for Mac and Windows PC which saves a lot of time adjusting settings.
See RME's forum announcement here: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=205246#p205246
Their manual is very nice in explaining all the functions but it can be tedious navigating the menus with twisting/mashing the little knobs. The new interface is much appreciated:

Where is the Windows version?, can only find for Mac/ios

 

[Forsaked]

Where is the Windows version?, can only find for Mac/ios

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=37784

 

[tiddlywinks]

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=37784

Thanks

 

[G8torbyte]

Where is the Windows version?, can only find for Mac/ios

Here is the direct link to the latest Windows version 0.95 beta. I was using 0.93 and just updated it.
https://www.rme-audio.de/downloads/adi2 … n_095b.zip
RME does good work with providing updates and improvements on the software so keep an eye on their forum.

 

[eobet]

Does anyone have the ADI-2 and MiniDSP Ears?

I'm trying to check what the EQ actually does, and unless I'm doing it wrong... even extreme values seem to do surprisingly little...

(Note, they do something, I can see it in the graph, but nowhere near what I expected them to. A huge notch in the EQ, for example, only slightly lowers the graph in REW, which I didn't expect.)

 

[ok computer]

Does anyone have the ADI-2 and MiniDSP Ears?

I'm trying to check what the EQ actually does, and unless I'm doing it wrong... even extreme values seem to do surprisingly little...

(Note, they do something, I can see it in the graph, but nowhere near what I expected them to. A huge notch in the EQ, for example, only slightly lowers the graph in REW, which I didn't expect.)

Double check your graphs scale in REW first. But also when you look at the FR of a headphone measured on a dummy head or speakers measured in a room with eq applied, the result is not going to be super nice and predictable most of the time. Your 6db bass boost could look like 4db bass boost with other random deviations in the response outside of where you are targeting. The acoustic environment of the cup will determine how that added or energy affects the response. And then there is variation from measurement to measurement to account for as well.