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transmaster

Contributor
Original poster
FiiO has done it again. I have had a number of Class "D" amps over the years and they have had their uses, mostly with vintage tube type radios, especially military receivers with have very minimal audio out put. Think of a Class "D" as a switching A/B audio amp. I have a lot of FiiO stuff and when I spotted the Level One looked at the high quality innards and the digital inputs, and $139.95 I had to have one. The audio on My Mac Studio is criminally bad for a $2500 system. My FiiO K7 has taken care of this problem with headphones and IEM's but nothing for speakers.

JadeAudio Level One.

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I used the USB-C hookup. It also has a coaxial Digital input which I will use with My GMKtech G11 mini pc. It was a straight forward job. I used a pair of Polk Audio RTi A1's. The amp actually puts out about 125 Watts or so into 8 ohms. Don't pay any attention to the 600 Watt claims that is Class "D" hype. The Amp would need a larger power supply to even get close to that. SoundSource spotted it as soon a I turned it on and I was up and running. I noticed an interesting thing. At first I was not pleased with the sound, but after about 30 minutes of use the amp smoothed out and it now sounds fantastic. It 48VDC 5A power supply is heavier and almost as large as the amp it powers. My sound has now been fixed.
 
This is funny. The Jade Audio Level one works great but since Sound Source has added controls for my HomePods I have been mostly using them. The Jade Audio is going to come into its own when I tie it to the Mini PC with that I can switch between the Mac Studio and the GMKTech PC by switching inputs at the Level One.
 
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