It varies. With Room EQ Wizard, these are indeed pops and clicks, with Tidal more like static noise, but on certain tracks WDM works acceptable, on others however the sound resembles me the sound of turntable needle..
Hi
I thought REW was used to set-up eq files and convolution, filters etc. Which are then loaded into JRiver DSP studio -- it seems that you are running this program during normal playback?? I would think you would run REW without the WDM first. Thanks for the confirm
As for Tidal, or any streaming source really, I have set this up for 9 people (make that 10 now). And after some tweaking, I just always have gotten the WDM driver to work ... and I'm talking about cheapo laptops connected to desktop speakers to "high end" Naim and Linn systems. Only ones that I had issues with was when the st-up was not using JRiver as the renderer. (eg. a PS audio bridge and a Linn DS - connecting the HTPC direct to the dac sorted this). Actually though, there was a sound card system running on ASIO drivers that I had to use WASAPI to make work.
Now when I say it never has clicks or pops -- that's not really true -- sometimes this happens when the wdm zone is first invoked, but then it disappears. I only used Tidal for two months and I also tried Qubuz for two months (the later I prefer because you can fine tune the latency/buffer settings on their end so you don't have to go down as low), but once the stream is buffered it worked very well. Sometimes it happens with IMDB trailers, but I think thats a bandwidth problem on their server side. I do have some "smoothness" issues sometimes (delays, cut-outs) but this is rare and I think this is more network based or a temporary low internet debit/lag. I do not expect the sound quality to be as good as local playback there's too many variables; but it is still pretty impressive.
I'm sure there must be some hardware incompatibilities. But generally there seem to me to be workarounds.
This is what I have done when helping friends out.
1) set-up their audio without the WDM running. (using WASAPI unless their DACs have native ASIO drivers)
2) make the WDM driver the default in windows
3) set-up a separate zone for WDM streaming. run one of those BBC type video sync vids to help with messing with the latency/buffering (I do this even if the person is not interested in video, I find it helps give a fast ball-park. (usually come out to between 20 and 40ms)
If I really can't get it right and I'm using ASIO, I try WASAPI.
4) set up a zone switch rule so local audio is not going to use the same latency/buffering settings
As I said, the only real problems I have seen with these completely different set-ups is when they are not using JRiver as a renderer (network streamer/players or DLNA renderers) and with some ASIO drivers.
Have I just gotten lucky?? ... I'm far from an expert!!
Or are people not setting up distinct zones for local and streaming playback? are these problems occurring only on systems that don't use JRiver as a renderer?; are these problems occurring using ASIO drivers?
There are just so many posts on this it would be nice to at least to empirically reduce the possible causes and maybe define what might be incompatible or risky
