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[thomaspf]

Hi,

I am running Win 10 Creators Edition and have a range of DACs that either have an XMOS interface with variants of the Thesycon driver or some Amanero devices. The machine I am using is a high powered 4 core laptop in balanced power mode. For all of these I pretty much use the same settings.

As output device I select the respective ASIO driver with DSD over DOP disabled and then I enable DSD bitstreaming.

1. First question is whether this uses direct DSD over ASIO avoiding the CPU overhead of packing the bits into PCM samples?

I recently bought a Hugo 2 and I need some help to get that to work stable. After tracking down the ASIO driver package I am getting crackling especially for DSF128 and DSF256 files with these exact settings.

The friendly user support suggested that JRiver does not support direct DSD over ASIO and suggested I use DOP. They have tested direct DSD over ASIO with foobar and do not see any issues. Unfortunately selecting the DOP option for the Hugo driver does not change the crackling.

As a next step I installed foobar on this machine and added the plugins for DSD playback and direct DSD output. It works stable without any problems.

2. Have there been any changes to the ASIO code lately?
3. Does anyone else see this problem with DSF128/DSF256 files on a  Hugo 2?

I upgraded the CPU priority of the JRiver process to High and that makes it better but it is still not completely gone.

4. Any other suggestions as to what I could try?

Thanks for reading

 Thomas

[dtc]

I am using an original Hugo with DSD64 (1x) and DSD128(2x) with DoP with no problem.  The computer is an ancient Netbook with a JMark of about 450, which may be the slowest  MC computer in current use, running Windows 7.  I do load files in memory to minimize disk reads during playback. 

The stuttering you hear sounds like a CPU issue, especially if you hear it with 2x and 4x, but not 1x. Are you, by chance, using the DSD Encoding option in dsp studio? That would convert a DSD to PCM and back to DSD?  That should be set to None.

[thomaspf]

Thanks for the reply. The stream goes through untouched. The CPU usage hovers around <1%.

I did experiment with the power modes and this happens when the CPU clocks down. When I switch to high performance mode it seems to be completely gone but it should not take the a 4 core CPU running at 3.2 Ghz to pass through audio data.

None of this is required on Foobar.

The only major changes in the OS have been the meltdown/Spectre fixes. Could this be somehow related?

Cheers

  Thomas

[dtc]

The only other suggestion is to check in Audio Path and make sure no changes are being made, but you may have done that already.

Unfortunately, I do not use Windows 10 so am probably not much help.  As I said, on Windows 7/8 I do not have problems but I also have not done the recent updates. Any way you can easily test on a computer with Windows 7/8?

You could try converting DSD to PCM on the fly and see how that sounds. My experience on the original Hugo was I did not hear a lot of difference between DSD and PCM.  To do that go into dsp studio, Output Format and set >768, 705, 352 to 176KHz. That will convert DSD to PCM at 176 KHz.


Sorry.

[RD James]

Check the buffer size used in Media Center, and the buffer size / mode if those options are available via the device's drivers.
Sounds like it's not large enough.

[JimH]

Thanks for the reply. The stream goes through untouched. The CPU usage hovers around <1%.

I did experiment with the power modes and this happens when the CPU clocks down. When I switch to high performance mode it seems to be completely gone but it should not take the a 4 core CPU running at 3.2 Ghz to pass through audio data.

None of this is required on Foobar.

The only major changes in the OS have been the meltdown/Spectre fixes. Could this be somehow related?

Antivirus?

[dtc]

If the files are on a NAS or usb drive, try moving them to an internal drive. You can also try enabling Memory Play - Load File (Undecoded).

I have my ASIO buffer set at the default value but a higher one might help.

[thomaspf]

Hi
thank you for the suggestions. Anti Virus is out since it works just fine with foobar 2000.

Here is a screenshot that might help put some light into the mistery.

Cheers

   Thomas

[Awesome Donkey]

Anti Virus is out since it works just fine with foobar 2000.

I wouldn't be quick to say this. Just because it works with foobar2000 doesn't mean it doesn't with MC. Antivirus has been troublesome lately, causing some issues with MC.

[JimH]

And those are two different sets of files.  Antivirus software might even behave that way with two different builds of MC.

It may not be antivirus software, but the only way to rule it out is to uninstall it (just to test).

[dtc]

The screen shot indicates you are converting from DSD to PCM.  A 4x DSD file (11.2 MHz DSD) will convert to a 1.4 MHz PCM file, which you Output Format setting is further downsampling to 384 KHz.  If you look at the sample rate color indicator on the Hugo 2, I bet it says 384 PCM (Purple) rather than DSD (white).  Those are the colors on my Hugo. I assume they are the same on Hugo 2.

I would check to be sure that you have Bitstreaming set to DSD.  And, turn off Output Format in dsp studio as a test.  Bitstreaming should bypass it, but it is something to also look at.  The ASIO driver should have DoP checked.

Here is what my Audio Path shows when playing a 2X DSD. It clearly indicates that DoP is being used.

[thomaspf]

Fair point on the antivirus but in this case I think DTC probably identified the issue?

For some inexplicable reason I did not have DSD bitstreaming enabled on this machine.

Now it correctly reads

DSD 11.3 Mhz 1 bit 2ch using ASIO (bitstreaming)

Everything seems good...

Thank you!

   Thomas

[dtc]

Glad it is working.

What version of the Chord ASIO driver are you using? I use 1.03 and it does not work with native sample rate. Not sure if it is Hugo versus Hugo 2 issue or a driver version issue.  Thanks.

[thomaspf]

Hi,

I contacted support and they send me a package which installs "1.05" but I don't know whether that is available for the hugo.


Unfortunately, I discovered by now that I had the laptop in "High performance mode" with the CPU runing at 3.2Ghz when it worked fine. In balanced power mode I am still getting the crackling. I am following up on that and will report back.

Cheers

   Thomas

[dtc]

Thanks for the update. You certainly should not need high performance mode to make this work. As I said, I have a 2009 Netbook that streams 2x DSD just fine.  Hope Chord can help.  Have you tried loading tracks into memory?  Not sure it will help, but worth a try. Use the current version of MC, since there were issues with this feature that were recently fixed.   Could be a W10 issue with the new patches.  Good luck.

[thomaspf]

Thanks, yes I am using the latest version of JRiver on W10 with all the latest patches.

Since this whole issue is so CPU sensitive I am suspecting some Spectre/Meltdown side effect. I will try whether the changes to mediate some of the perf impact in the upcoming Windows release gets this back to work.

Cheers

   Thomas

[thomaspf]

Hi,

just to close this out. I could never get this to work with the drivers from Chord. Something is not quite right?

However, after uninstalling and relying on the generic USB Audio Class 2 driver that is shipping with the W10 Creators Edition everything works fine now. WASAPI with exclusive mode gives me rock solid 24/352 and DSF256 playback via DOP.

Cheers

   Thomas