Furutech ADL GT40
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In this month's mag
July 2013
SUPERTEST: Soundbar solutions £250-£450
GROUP TEST: 46-47in smart TVs
GROUP TEST: Standmount speakers £350-£450
© 2013 Haymarket Publishing
Comments
What happened to this product?
Has it stood the test of time, as the print magazine's DAC round up didn't give this unit a mention?
If the DAC performance is your only concern the GT40 can now be bettered. But, take its headphone output, phono stage and analogue-to-digital capabilities into account and it remains a fine buy.
I have owned 2 separate Furutech GT 40 devices for a few days over the last two weeks - both exhibited a harsh static kind of breakthrough noise over the signal just on the USB output at irregular but frequent intervals. Whilst the noise is present on USB (and the recordings) the headphone output is clean (no noise present) at the same time. This noise grows from low to very disruptive over a short time. The only solution is to turn it off. But it returns shortly after. Several recordings have been ruined but have allowed me to prove the condition to originate from the Furutech.
I have recordings and graphs of it available and have sent them to the manufacturer and await comment.
I even tried recordings with everything on battery apart from the Furutech. Every device in the chain has been changed including power outlet and ring main. I only use high quality interconnects and have swapped them. The only consistent item has been the Furutech. Recordings have been successfully completed in the same location by using a Tascam DR07 PCM recorder with absolutely no interference.
The interference has occurred on a macbook with audacity software normally used for podcast recording, a Mac Pro - Quad-Core Intel Xeon using Adobe Soundbooth software (my main system for recording audio and editing video which is very well maintained). I was led to believe by the supplier that the Furutech could not be faulty but a determined search on the Internet has found a number of ‘similar’ problems which sound to be the very same issue.
It is my belief that very few people will have actually used the Furutech for sound recording, indeed most reviews specifically say they have only used it as a phono pre-amp and headphone amp. The device does not seem to have been tested yet by the recording blogs and forums. It is my belief that this fault may be quite wide-spread but not yet widely experienced as a fault.
If you want to make recordings then be warned. I have been very frustrated trying....
I use the GT40 for digitizing my LPs and experienced the same static noise on recordings using a MacBook Pro with both Pure Vinyl and Audacity. The cure is to set the Mac MIDI input (for recording) to 24bit/96kHz and the output to 16bit/96kHz. With these MIDI settings, there is no longer any static noise from the GT40 when recording. This is the explanation that I received from Furutech technical support:
"The TENOR chip used in the GT40 has a bandwidth limitation of 12Mbps (USB 2.0 full speed operation), and due to this limitation only one I2S input or output can be set for 24bit/96KHz application at one time. Therefore, under this condition, for simultaneous multiple-channel applications, the rest of I2S interfaces have to be configured at 16-bit / 48KHz or 16-bit/96KHz and even lower resolution/sampling rates."
For playback of the 24bit/96kHz GT40 generated files, set the MIDI input to 16bit/96kHZ and output to 24bit/96kHz, sit back and enjoy the music.