Got you…looks like you did all I would do. I had a unit at one point that would turn on but display BIN for no reason at all, and also would not “click” in the headphones, so it would look right on the screen, and all correct, but no sound would come since the actual headphones didn’t receive power to my understanding. That click is essential to knowing it’s feeding them.
My guess is hardware…but check more. Good luck and ping if you need me test anything on my end. Take care!
Btw, I tried many other DACs and Amps. Nothing compared for me. Even the Dave didn’t sound as good for me…but that’s my taste. I love the musical nature and I own Utopia and Stellia, so the tuning for each via preset is gorgeous. Plus with silver cables feeding the unit (audioquest), I was able to make this Arche sing. I truly love it! It’s so clear, and powerful. Yet so small and elegant. Closest I heard was Phonitor and ADI2DAC combo, but that still wasn’t as enjoyable and so complex and far far far less elegant. Hats off to Focal and Micromega. Just hopefully they stay durable and last us years.
Just a quick update for anyone following this thread. After testing a loaner Arche that I got from my local Focal distributor yesterday, I have indeed found out that my personal unit is defective. The loaner unit is working as expected without any issues I have described above with my Arche.
I’m now trying to figure out how to get my unit repaired/replaced, as I have bought it only a month ago.
Will update here later on how the warranty proceedings went for reference for anyone who may be dealing with issues with Focal gear later on.
Thanks again for the help from this amazing community, especially @Henry.
So glad you figured it out…sorry to hear it’s your unit of course. But I’m sure they’ll take care of you with it being so new. Good luck and reach out if you need anything.
Would love to hear how the repair process goes in case I need it in the future.
Also, I suggest to register the unit on the Focal site. It sends you a warranty certificate, etc… But for repairs, they say contact your dealer and they will facilitate that with Focal.
The Feliks Elise is a poor pairing with the Clear.
The Elise has such a high output impedance that a) half its power will be lost to the amplifier itself (not that the Clear need much power) and b) it’ll significantly slew the Clears low-end response into obvious excess, flabbiness and bloat.
Lots of people recommend lots of things - for lots of different reasons. They may genuinely like the Elise/Clear combination. For me, having heard it, I thought it left their bass clearly under-damped (flabby, rather than nice and taut,) and exaggerated with the Clear.
Pure tube amps with low-impedance headphones (Clear are just 55 ohm) are often a challenge, since even transformer-coupled designs are often higher in output impedance than is ideal (lower the better, with <1 ohm being ideal, but 1/8th the impedance of the headphone is a good rule of thumb). That means <6.8 ohms OI on the amp w/ the Clear.
A ZMF Pendant in 8/32 configuration would be close enough. A WA6-SE would be about double the OI you’d want ideally (on it’s “Lo” setting) - and I’ve heard that and it was quite enjoyable … but not quite as crisp and clean as the Clear’s low-end can be. Mids and up were lovely with both (though very different, at least with stock tubes).
Otherwise, not a lot comes to mind unless you want to deal with OOP exotica, long waits and have a much bigger budget than the Elise.
I’ve been recently testing the Clear with various amps, and don’t disagree with @Torq about the impact of high output impedance amps. However, I do urge you to try for yourself. Sometimes bass bloat isn’t disagreeable (e.g., for harsh productions), and sometimes the other benefits of the amp outweigh the negatives.
I’d expect the Euforia would be a far better choice for the Clear than the Elise. I’ve auditioned both the Elise and Euforia recently (only with Empyreans though), and also found the bass to get a bit too thick and a bit fuzzy from the Elise. None of those issues with the Euforia though.
I’m no expert but since no one else has responded to your question, I’ll take a stab at it.
Short answer: The lowest gain setting that still gets your music as loud as you want without going much past 75% of your amp’s max volume is always preferred.
If I remember right this is because there is more dynamic range available at the lower gain setting. Makes sense. If your amp has 106db of range and you switch from 0 gain to +6db gain, then it will have less than 106db of range now. It isn’t 100db though. More like 104db or so depending on the amp design.
And the reason you should avoid going much past 75% of your amp’s max volume is that it will start to distort as you approach 100%. Where that happens depends on the amp design.
Whether you can hear a difference between high and low gain is another matter. Personally I leave my amp set to high gain because sometimes I need it and I’m too lazy to switch back and forth for a small measured performance increase. But you do you.
I need some recommendation to setup Foobar to work with Arche.
I just bought a Focal Arche for my Utopias and I also acquired a new laptop and connected it to the Arche with USB. I installed the Arche asio driver from Focal’s website and I can hear sound from the Utopias after I selected 325800 sampling rate; I was able to hear sound with the test from the advanced sound properties in Windows and the Arche shown the correct sampling rate on the display.
Then I installed Foobar 2000 and most of the components and select the same sampling rate in SACD settings.
I started to play a DSD file but the Focal Arche dispaly showed no input and the sampling rate in Focal Arche Control Panel changed to 705600 sampling rate.
Frankly, the best part of Foobar2000 is that you can uninstall it.
I’ve directly compared Foobar, Jriver Media Center, Roon, and Audirvana. Roon sounded the best, followed by a tie of Audirvana and JRMC, and Foobar was so far behind it wasn’t funny.
Stock, Foobar just sounds bad. Go get a demo version of JRMC or Audirvana and compare yourself. Sure, you can customize Foobar, but…
Setup is torture. Once you add in all the plugins you need to get WASAPI/ASIO working, along with whatever other EQ or stuff is flavor of the month for add-ins, then spend a week trying to get the interface into a usable state… and you’re left with a player that still doesn’t sound that good and is missing tons of features the other players have.
If you have Tidal or Qobuz, then get Roon or Audirvana. I think Roon is hands down better. It doesn’t crash, has a far better interface, and manages your library in ways that makes Audirvana blush with envy.
