All the rain down there is having some benefits for you. Your tweaking has accelerated.
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I was finally able to squeeze in a round of golf this early morning. It is good to see the sun again. The ground was soaking wet though.
I have done the easy tweaking, vmax will start his serious tweaks on MK2 soon 
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Question for our high tech guys since i know nothing about it. Say you are only using one input like i am which is I2S 1 and have it lifted and shell xlr output lifted and everything else grounded. How are the other inputs effecting the sound if your only listening to 1 isolated input? Ted stated coming soon will be the option to shut off unused inputs, isnt that kinda the same thing? Actually that is 2 questions. 
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The two I2S inputs and the USB input have the active electronics and hence powering them down can make a noticeable difference. AES3, S/PDIF and TOSLink are much simpler, except for TOSLink they just have an isolation transformer and a comparator to see if the value is high or low. There’s not much chance for those unused inputs generating noise, BUT
Still if you have a cable connected being able to isolate it so it doesn’t act like an antenna might be a good thing. If there’s no cable you might instead get less noise by not lifting the ground. I suspect that with only one cable connected you’ll find that all of the other inputs can be treated as a unit and have either all other inputs ground lifted or all other input not ground lifted.
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But they are good questions…
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Thank you Ted, i have found the sweet spot for my system with only lifting the one input i use and the shell xlr lifted. Sounds so amazing! Your the best!
After a lot of experiments I finally found a way to keep the magic (realism, detailed sound and voices so present in my room as never before) without that kind of light brightness into the equation. Cables connected matter… thanks for your last posts that confirmed what my ears were listening to.
- I2S 1 Input - USED (Matrix) = lifted
- I2S 2 Input - USED (PST) = lifted
- Other Inputs - all UNUSED = grounded
- Outputs = lifted
- Shell = grounded
End of game for my tastes. Period!
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Luca,
Does this mean that you’ve decided not to use USB directly into the MK2 DAC?
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I was using USB last weeks, with great results. Since a few days I went back to Matrix/I2S.
The difference is very subtle I confess. However even if I2S is still preferable to my ears at the moment, I need some more comparisons because I replaced my faulty USB cable with a new one (same model) that still needs to be better cooked.
Grounded/lifted settings seem to have a bigger impact on sound than USB/I2S connections IMHO and it makes me think how a genius is Ted!
To be honest? I’m more excited now waiting for a firmware upgrade from Ted rather than for the AirLens launch. Please take it with a grain of salt (one day I could negate to have ever said it).
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Luca, I may try your setup (you know why). I also had more tweaking on ground/lifting, and I have a new favorite of the day.
Grounding all I2S and USB inputs (I use both I2Ss but not USB) and lifting other inputs, then I lifted both output and shell too. This gives me the best soundstage and mid-range without brightness. Yup, I am set (again)!
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We have so similar systems that it’s quite odd we ended up to different if not totally opposite settings.
Loudspeakers, rooms, personal tastes, daily moods, last glass of wine? Everything counts…
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Yours is similar to my original setup (my first favorite). So, I will listen to my new setup then go back to my first one in a couple days. I changed so often that I don’t think any of these favorites can be trusted without longer listening.
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Was there an empty wine glass near you when you wrote this?
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Audiophile exhaustion and contentment basically give me a sense of inebriation like wine, blunders included!
Cheers!
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Ted,
I was finally able to try the lift commands
In my system this post appears to be very sage advice. When i tried to lift all inputs it sucked out the life. Outputs lifted doubly worse.
While I am using just i2S1, just lifting it and leaving all other inputs grounded and shorting plugs on the USB and i2S2 gives the most open, rich, and natural sound
Can you clarify if USB and i2S have shorting plugs and ground active that it is an equivalent deactivation of their electronic circuits as is a ground lift of their inputs?
I also have a question regarding your MK2 video with Paul. You stated though their is two FPGAs you use only one currently. Which one is it which is active doing processing? My suspicion is the active one is feeding more noise into i2s2 based on that is the noisier one to stream to in my system . Even with i2s1 shorted it doesn’t help. By looking at proximity of i2S1 to the FPGA most inboard that would perhaps confirm what I hear based on input positions and digital board layout?
Can you also explain shell lift better? Activated it seems to add noise floor across the board for me. Some seem to call it air. I will call it noise that is a obscuring cloud to the details in the music. What shell is it actually lifting? For output XLRs to preamp? It doesn’t seem compatible with Galen’s Iconoclast Gen 2 design.
BTW @tedsmith I really love this customization capability. My MK2 took a huge dial it in boost tonight ! The user interface not your doing, does make me curse at its unfriendly navigation. It is definitely not a tweak to do on the fly. Too bad the remote doesn’t make it easier for those using multiple inputs.
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I now have paralysis by analysis from lifting. I don’t know what I like better now. I need to be more methodical and make one change per night after I’ve listened for an hour or so.
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Haha! I feel you. I am also planning to do a more methodical approach. So I think I will need to sit down and make my notes for each “lifting setup”. Maybe it is not a bad idea to start with the two very extremes: Nothing lifted and everything lifted. Compare the two and decide which one I do prefer. After that, start with changing just one setting from the previous preferred setup. Maybe I need to create a whole matrix spreadsheet to compare all combinations…?
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The secret is listen to what you know. And take Ted’s advice which I quoted. If it sounds close eliminate it. I came to Ted’s conclusion having not read it first. It was totally head and shoulders above this and that configurations. Lucky for me I don’t spin silver disks. Just streaming one input makes it obvious. I know my Bacch4Mac cofig. I will pul an optical off TV and make that 3D too into the Babyface FS. Feed it all to the DS MK2 under one quietest I2S2 Silence that USB and i2S1 electronics shorting lugs no UI menu from hell. Ground lift on i2S1 is the ticket. OMG dude!
I can personally attest that any other method will lead to madness.
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