Intoducing the McIntosh D100 Digital Preamplier

[MORTIS]

Originally Posted by o0OBillO0o

How many kept their D100? How many jumped to the D150?

Thanks

I feed only redbook to my D100 , so I see no benefit in changing to the D150.

Originally Posted by DjHiFi

Thanks for the warm welcome! It feels like good music at AA.

Has anyone compared the D100 with Bel Canto DACs?

My dealer had a brand new D100 in box and wanted me to take it for demoing but only for 2 days because he said he wants to demo it for other people in the store. I told him to run it in the store and demo it for other people if needed but I'll pick it up next weekend.

Is 100 hour burn-in time good enough for McIntosh gear or does it need 200 hours? I want to take it home after burn-in time and test it in my system, if it sounds OK order a new one.

Cheers

DjHiFi: Welcome to AA!

That sounds like a good plan to let the store run it for a while before trying out at home. You'll find various opinions on how long Mc components need to burn in, and some say no time at all. I'm all for giving them some time. When you get it home and hook it up, I would even suggest you turn it on and leave it on, then listen to it the next day... if you can wait.
I think you'll be very pleased with it; I'm continually amazed how good my system sounds. Note however that I use the D100 as a dac only, never as a stand-alone preamp.

[NZ421291]

Originally Posted by MORTIS

I feed only redbook to my D100 , so I see no benefit in changing to the D150.




DjHiFi: Welcome to AA!

That sounds like a good plan to let the store run it for a while before trying out at home. You'll find various opinions on how long Mc components need to burn in, and some say no time at all. I'm all for giving them some time. When you get it home and hook it up, I would even suggest you turn it on and leave it on, then listen to it the next day... if you can wait.
I think you'll be very pleased with it; I'm continually amazed how good my system sounds. Note however that I use the D100 as a dac only, never as a stand-alone preamp.

+1. Love my D100, no desire to 'up-grade' to D150. I had a Dealer in my home last week (doesn't carry McIntosh), he said he didn't realise just how good a McIntosh system could sound!

I allow my D100 to warm-up, usually overnight, to sound optimum- so from cold, it sounds very good- warm- its sounds amazing.

I'm a firm believer in allowing components to warm-up. I've even had a amp manufacturer state that they burn-in for 24 hours, & run all tests after the burn-in for new amps before shipping. Especially the case for Class a amps & for digital equipment.

[Ilppis]

Hello eveyone!

Im having a problem with my D100. I bought one off Ebay 6months ago. When it arrived, I plugged it in to my computer via USB. The sound was continuously distorted and I fumbled one evening with drivers with no luck. Before calling it a night I tried other inputs as well. Same distortion there...
Well, I sent the unit for repair. The shop diagnosed that the digital board was busted, and ordered a new one. I finally received the unit back few days ago and it is a one fine sounding piece...except I cannot get the USB input to work.
My computer cannot recognize the unit. I tried few USB cables, my old computer with windows7 and my friends computer too. No luck. You can see the AT32UC3A DFU in device manager, when you plug the unit in, but you cannot update the drivers or anything. Mcintosh Control Panel software also shows "no devices connected" or similar. Been trying to uninstall & reinstall the drivers. I even deleted manually every mcintosh titled data with registry editor. I even tried the d150 drivers.

Any help?

I wanted to ask here before contacting Mcintosh, as you guys seem to know almost everything.

I'd rather not to sent unit back to shop as it took so long to receive the spare board to here in Finland, but it would be nice to get the unit functioning normally.

[Yamaki]

I don't know enough about your system to be sure but it may not be the D100 that is at fault here.

You say you experienced the distortion when you first purchased the unit and it is still present even though the DAC was repaired. Let's think outside the DAC box for a moment.

1. McIntosh has a current set of driver's available on their website for use with this DAC being served by a Windows based machine. I'd recommend you have the most recent driver package from McIntosh installed on your PC. See the McIntosh USB Audio Installation Guide and the Windows Driver Package under "Manuals | Downloads" here:

https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/support/product-support

I'd recomment you download both.

2. Tell us about the USB A to B cable you are using to connect your computer to your DAC. Is it a good quality cable? Are the connectors in good condition? My first USB A to B cable was what came in the box. I upgraded to a Wireworld Platinum Starlight and the SQ improved greatly.

3. My D100 sounded pretty good when I installed it but a little distortion, aka, "jitter" was heard from time to time. I installed a Wyred4Sound "Recovery" USB Reclocker and the distortion was gone.

4. I don't suggest this is for everyone but many PCs are "noisy" so this might be a solution for you. Either build or buy a small audio/video server. I built a simple, no fan installed, Windows based computer. It acts as my Roon endpoint as well. It was easy and cheap to build and has worked well for me since 2014. More information can be found here:

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/bits-...a-p-s-v3-zuma/

In conclusion, although you may very well still have a problem with the D100, there are a few other areas to investigate to truly determine the origin of the distortion.

Good luck!

[Ilppis]

No, the unit sounds fine now. I just can't get the USB working at all. It worked with the faulty unit though. I'm not sure is it driver related or not, but I've tried it with 3 different computers with no luck.

[Macuser]

FWIW my D100 won't connect to my older computer through the usb input either. So I use an rca input which works very well.

[Ilppis]

My computer is 6 months old. I build it up few days before d100 originally arrived. It's running Windows10. The old computer and my friends computer are both using win7, and it didn't work with either.

Im gonna format the old computer today and do a clean windows install to try if it works. Not willing to do that to the new one yet. It's mystery though why it worked with the faulty unit. I keep wondering if D100 needs some kind of usb-implementation to be flashed on the chip, that hasn't been done. Firmware of both units are 1.00. Has there even been any FW updates to the unit?

[Humbuster]

UPdate: Never mind.

McIntosh Customer service responded in 1 day and resolved my issue.