Does anyone experience sound improvement from restarting power off and on of DAC?


Does anyone experience an improvement in sound from restarting the DAC every week or so by powering off for a minute and then restarting the power back on? I’ve noticed that with my PS Audio Directstream Mk1 that I get a lot of improvement in sound if I power off at the power switch at the back of the dac for a minute and then restart the dac. I find by doing this once every 5 days or so much improves the sound quality. Does anyone else experience this? I have been told on several occasions that this is normal and not to worry. 

mitchb

Showing 1 response by erik_squires

I haven’t tried it, but based on what you are doing, it may be something is getting too hot. Make sure it’s ventilated.

There have bee a number of small compute intense boxes over the years I’ve owned which malfunctioned due to the manufacturer not taking care to ventilate and add appropriate heat sinks. These were usually wifi routers but also indludes Roon like streamers. Additional cooling often helped.

My Mytek DAC also suffers this if fed very high sample rate music, so I put pucks underneath it and limit the signal rate.

With the wifi routers I sometimes would drill a hole over an offending chip and add a heat sink and micro fan. Not saying you need to, just saying it’s happened so often that I’m kind of surprised it doesn’t happen now.

I'd feel the dac and look for any particularly hot areas above or below and take care that any hot areas get extra ventilation.