Hi Sk123,
welcome to the RME User Forum.
Intro
Sorry for the wall of text, but this is so far the best and more complete info that I can give you on this topic so that you get a good intro/start into the whole thematic. Normally using the ADI-2 Pro is plug and play everything important like e.g. routing of audio is done automatically depending on whether you plug it to USB or not etc ... So in theory you only need to turn the volume and B/T knobs to adjust the sound to your taste and requirements of the music material.
The ASIO driver is recommended to be installed as this offers the most trouble free audio support without the impact of the Windows audio system and a few other things, see below/later.
Assumption
From your description I assume that due to the long listening with the old solution, where the gaming mode and the setting for Dolby Surround shaped / changed the sound a lot, your listening habits have also changed and you first have to get used to normal sound again. Maybe by this you additionally have to face the sound representation of your phones and that there might be something that you miss. Potentially the reason why you used the electronic sound shaping features of yur Asus card (which is definitively not the original / normal HiFi sound).
This was also the case for me after I replaced my over 30 years old very bass-heavy HiFi speakers with much better ones.
You can be sure that with the ADI-2 Pro you have purchased a really acknowledged very good device that can even hold its own with mastering engineers in the class of much more expensive devices. You can also have a look at this converter shootout of a german mastering engineer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doHG32aXBDY and also download the original WAV files (as Youtube manupulates audio files) and compare the original wav files.
There the ADI-2 Pro plays against devices in the ~€6000-8000 class, which are even specialized in A/D (so no D/A) and then also do not offer the many possibilities of the ADI-2 Pro. I do not want to belittle the established studio devices in any way, but simply give you a certain dimension that you get here for a fair price an outstanding engineering performance / solution and a fantastic sound.
The MADIface driver is the ASIO driver that comes with the device. After the installation of it you can use it for applications that support ASIO e.g. MusicBee Player or Foobar2000 (with ASIO plugin). This driver is also needed for firmware updates through USB and if you want to use the DIGIcheck audio analysis tools.
Blog Article as little Intro about the device
Maybe you want to read my blog article about ADI-2 Pro / DAC which gives a nice overview about the devices:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … ses-EN-DE/
Do not miss to read the manual
The manual of the ADI-2 Pro R BE is a treasure chest of useful information. You do not need to understand everything fully right frm the beginning, but it will be extremely helpful to know what information you can find where.
Its starts with more general and important / useful information and next goes more and more into details.
I can tell you from own experience .. it's always good to know what information is included. So give it some time to discover the nice features, that are included.
Check the settings of output channels
As I mentioned already it could be the case that your listening habit have changed over time, but there is also another possibility, that you maybe erraneously changed ettings in the ADI-2 Pro, that have big impact to the sound. They are there for mastering engineers to make some checks on the sound, but nothing for regular listening.
Check for each of the outputs, that you use (AN1/2, AN3/4) that
- Mono is OFF
- Width is set to 1.0
- M/S-Proc is OFF
- Phase Invert is OFF
- Crossfeed is OFF
- DE-Emphasis is set to Auto
- Dual EQ is OFF
- Dim is OFF
You find these settings under
- I/O -> Main Output 1/2 -> Settings
- I/O -> Phones Out 3/4 -> Settings
Next I would also check, that Parametric EQ and (dynamic-) Loudness is off.
Use Remap Key function to be able to quickly toggle between original / EQd sound
It makes also sense to use the Remap Keys funktion to bind the function to disable all EQing to one of the four front buttons to enable for for quick A/B comparisons between original and EQ'd sound. Under this category falls B/T controls, PEQ and dynamic loudness. You find this under Options -> SPDIF / Remap keys -> EQ(3) set to "EQ+B/T+Ld 1-4"
The original function of the EQ key you get by pressing it a little longer, a short push toggles EQing on/off quickly for all of your outputs (AN1/2, AN3/4).
You can have a look at this other blog article that I wrote, which other remap key functions are useful for me. Please ignore the integration with a RME recording interface, which is out of scope for your setup:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … our-Setup/
I just updated the article so that you can see the latest Remap Key settings that I am using:
Also for switching between phones and active monitors, because my phones are permanently plugged, normally the ADI-2 Pro automatically discovers that you plug-in phones and mutes the AN1/2 and does a slow ramp-up of volume.
To sum up
Ok .. so at this point I showed you how to get lossless sound, how to check this by using the Bittest (see also manual), how you can ensure proper settings on the ADI-2 Pro per output channel and how to A/B test sound with/without EQing.
Well and now we are at a point where you can use the full strength of the ADI-2 Pro to get a more tasteful sound by using B/T for quick adjustments of Bass/Treble for your phones or to use even the PEQ to make adjustments to fix certain deficites of your headphone in certain frequency ranges.
Give it time to accomode to the original sound
First I would ensure to accomodate to a more pure sound and maybe use only B/T controls to adjust to the recordings, not more, because if you listen to music of different eras and style you will notice, that the mastering engineers followed more or less the taste of that era so that you might need to adjust Bass/Treble quickly to compensate that a little.
Dynamic Loudness
Next point is to understand the merits of dynamic loudness and to set it correctly, that you get a dynamic Bass/Treble compensation on lower volumes so that the sound doesn't flatten out if your are hearing more silently. One of the real killer features of the ADI-2 Pro/DAC.
PEQ
And then finally you can check whether you get recommendations from this or other forums to adjust the sound of your phones using the PEQ that it might also sound better for your ears .. but beware, things like this need careful tweaking because everybody has different ears and there might also be production differences, that two different phones do not exactly sound the same.
Temperatures
Don't worry about the temperature, if its getting hot it shows that heat is dissipated out of the case, that good.
But please ensure that there is enough room on top of the device so that the hot air does not accumulate.
Also on the bottom of the device take care that air can flow around the device.
Have fun and enjoy your new ADI-2 Pro, it is an incredible good and versatile unit :-)
BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13