I have an LCD-3 and I find it drives it perfectly well (seems far more powerful than the LCD-3 requires), but I don't properly understand the technical details (I bought the ADI-2 Pro because a friend who is a digital audio engineer highly recommended RME to me) and Audeze suggested that while the LCD-3s ran fine on the ADI-2 Pro, the LCD-4 may not.

The sensitivity of the LCD-4 seems to be around 89 dB SPL at 1 mW RMS. For an impedance of 200 Ohm, the maximum output power of the ADI-2 Pro's symmetrical Phones connection is about 1700 mW RMS (manual p. 81). This gives a possible peak SPL of about 125 dB SPL (122 dB SPL RMS).

In terms of voltage, the sensitivity of the LCD-4 seems to be around 96 dB SPL at 1 V RMS which gives about 94 dB SPL at 0 dBu. For an impedance of 100 Ohm, the maximum output voltage of the ADI-2 Pro's (unsymmetrical) Phones connection is about 9.2 V RMS (21.5 dBu) (manual p. 81) giving a maximum output voltage of 18.4 V RMS (27.5 dBu) using a 200 Ohm load on the symmetrical Phones output.

Using the unsymmetrical Phones connection gives about 5.5 dB less maximum SPL since the maximum output voltage is (almost) halved (9.75 V RMS (22 dBu) v. 18.4 V RMS (27.5 dBu)).

Thus, the ADI-2 Pro should be more than powerful enough to drive the LCD-4 to your desired listening levels unless you listen at very high levels even using the unsymmetrical Phones output.

Manual: https://www.archiv.rme-audio.de/downloa … rofs_e.pdf

Do you mean balanced connection of phones ? According to manual DSD direct is not possible with balanced phones.

My cabling looks like this http://www.slowley.com/balanced.jpg (actually the long cable is a bit different as that one broke to Audeze sent me a fancier looking one, but you get the idea)

Mytek seems to not follow the same convention for symmetrical connection as RME. From the manual of the Manhattan DAC II:

Thus for that adapter, tip on red is L+, ring on red is R+, tip on black is L-, ring on black is R- and sleeve on both red and black is ground.

For the RME in symmetrical phones connection (manual p. 41), tip on Phones 3/4 is L+, ring on Phones 3/4 is L-, tip on Phones 1/2 is R+, ring on Phones 1/2 is R- and sleeve on both Phones 1/2 and 3/4 is unconnected.

Thus, using the mentioned cable while using the RME in symmetrical Phones connection gives L+/- to the positive and R+/- to the negative input of the connector. So you would have mono on both sides but one side inverted.

However, you might also have this cable intended to be used with the RME: https://www.dysonaudio.com/collections/ … le-adapter

Try using symmetrical connection and enabling M/S-processing. If nothing changes, you have got the wrong cable.

So, I don't need "M/S-processing" do I? As I think I have the right cable?