More > JRiver Media Center 24 for Mac
Audio Dropouts with New (2018) Mac Mini [Solved -- Time Machine]
Dennis in FL:
OK....I'll give it a shot. I'm not clear as to why I'd want to encode to DSD to the DAC.....and for that matter, why I don't want to encode.
I've had it on DSD 1X for about 2 hours and had only one hiccup in that time. A lot better but not perfect.
Awesome Donkey:
Seems even with Output Encoding set to 1xDSD the Mac still isn't always able to handle the on-the-fly conversion, albeit the dropout becoming more rare.
--- Quote from: Dennis in FL on May 14, 2019, 04:54:26 am ---I'm not clear as to why I'd want to encode to DSD to the DAC.....and for that matter, why I don't want to encode.
--- End quote ---
When you have Output Encoding set from None to 1xDSD (or higher), it's converting everything to 1xDSD on-the-fly. PCM to DSD (or DSD to PCM) conversions are lossy conversions and it's worth noting (like I mentioned earlier) all DSD conversions go through a PCM stage in the middle, so DSD > PCM > DSD, as there's no way to do a direct DSD conversion. Doing that conversion to 1xDSD (or higher) is a resource intensive operation, meaning the computer has to be fast enough to handle that. Now, let's say you have a 1xDSD file and you have Output Encoding set to 4xDSD, it's actually doing two conversions here (one to PCM then one back to 4xDSD) so it's going to be very taxing on a system. Lower end computers (and Macs, since they tend to have lower-end hardware for higher prices) can't handle these conversions too well and the results is these "dropouts". Multichannel content will be even more resource intensive, and thus more "dropouts" versus stereo content. When you set Output Encoding to 2xDSD or 4xDSD, it becomes even more resource intensive due to large 2xDSD and 4xDSD files are.
Try running the benchmark (Help > Benchmark...) and posting the results here.
Ultimately I personally recommend avoiding these conversions unless you have high-end hardware that's capable of handling these conversions on-the-fly without the "dropout" issues. Leave DSD as-is and bitstream it if your DAC supports it, and leave PCM as-is and don't do any conversions. The DAC (unless it's a DSD-only DAC, which is rare) should be able to handle/decode whatever is sent to it without the dropout issues caused by needless conversions, in my opinion.
Dennis in FL:
I had DSD encoding but still was getting occasional dropouts. I changed to none. I left channels to 2 channel stereo and no upmixing/downmixing.
I don't completely understand the advantages of encoding....I thought I was unloading CPU duties to the DAC and bypassing "CoreAudio"...but I was wrong.
I'll let you know if I'm still getting drops.
UPDATE: Just got multiple drops listening to an AIF file at 44K - Similar to the encoded DSD output drops I had earlier with the same file. I then listened to the same file on iTunes - trough the USB DAC...and playback was perfect. Which reminds me - I have never had dropouts on iTunes or a HiRes player (I have a Sony HAP)). I guess I had been thinking wrong that this was happening only on HiRes files....but in this case it was a CD AIF file that had dropouts only on JRiver.
blgentry:
Let me try to clear up the DSD confusion here:
1. NEVER use Output Encoding to DSD unless you know what you are doing and know what that setting does. It's essentially never needed. Only in very special cases.
2. Bitstreaming DSD should put minimal load on the mac and have your DSD capable DAC decode DSD, which is what you want probably.
3. Decoding DSD to PCM in the Mac, with JRiver MC, works totally fine and I have done it some without any audio interruptions. That being said, my DSD collection is tiny, so I don't have a lot of hours of testing. I just know I've played a good bit of DSD and never noticed a dropout. This is what you would normally do if your DAC does not support DSD natively, which none of mine do.
Brian.
Dennis in FL:
--- Quote from: Awesome Donkey on May 14, 2019, 04:58:06 am ---
Try running the benchmark (Help > Benchmark...) and posting the results here.
--- End quote ---
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac15,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Running 'Math' benchmark...
Single-threaded integer math... 3.466 seconds
Single-threaded floating point math... 2.132 seconds
Multi-threaded integer math... 1.003 seconds
Multi-threaded mixed math... 0.631 seconds
Score: 2627
Running 'Image' benchmark...
Image creation / destruction... 1.250 seconds
Flood filling... 0.357 seconds
Direct copying... 0.528 seconds
Small renders... 0.839 seconds
Bilinear rendering... 0.601 seconds
Bicubic rendering... 0.329 seconds
Score: 5637
Running 'Database' benchmark...
Create database... 0.193 seconds
Populate database... 1.088 seconds
Save database... 0.323 seconds
Reload database... 0.094 seconds
Search database... 0.896 seconds
Sort database... 0.681 seconds
Group database... 0.634 seconds
Score: 5499
JRMark (version 25.0.34 64 bit): 4588
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