AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt, Instructions Manual

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8
Setting Up DragonFly
DragonFly is designed to be “plug and play” with all major desktop and mobile devices
and operating systems, such as Android, Apple, and Microsoft Windows 10. DragonFly
requires no additional drivers to operate with any of these systems.
Note: DragonFly employs a bit-perfect digital volume control that resides
inside of
the DAC chip itself—a sophisticated implementation that ensures maximum fidelity,
dynamic contrast, and signal-to-noise ratio. With DragonFly connected to a PC or
mobile device, adjusting the host’s system volume control will, through proxy, control
the DragonFly’s onboard volume.
The Importance of Format
CDs operate at a sampling frequency of 44.1kHz. Compressed MP3 and AAC music files
and audio streams are typically encoded at one of three different quality levels—128kbps,
256kbps, or 320kbps—and are most often reconstructed as 44.1kHz files. Similarly, many
music downloads and CDs ripped as Apple Lossless or FLAC files are reconstructed to
44.1kHz. For these reasons, DragonFly will often produce the best results when your
computer is set to output a sample rate of 44.1kHz. If you have higher resolution files,
however, it is important to choose the correct higher sample rate in order to maximize
the benefit of those files. For the best performance with sampling rates above DragonFly
Cobalt’s 96kHz ceiling, files should be played at a rate mathematically related to their
native resolution. For instance, a 192kHz file should be played at 96kHz (i.e., 2 x 96000.0
= 192000.0).