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[Paul Coddington]

Just encountered an interesting problem that seems worth mentioning in case a fix is possible.

BACKGROUND:

I was recently delivered a new DAC (JDS Atom) as a birthday present by someone hoping I would compare it with my old one (Khadas Tone) to help them decide which to buy for themselves.

Given the specs for both DACs are well beyond the range of human hearing, it seems unlikely any differences would be audible, so a lot comes down to matching stack, software support, etc.

JDS Atom DAC matches visually with the headphone amp of the same name, uses a more modern version of the XMOS driver than the Khadas (no swapping drivers temporarily to upgrade firmware), but does not have DSD capability. JDS Atom also does not get as warm as the Khadas, has a separate mains supply (not USB powered) and powers itself down automatically when idle.

An interesting question was how the drivers would be handled. From what I have read, the XMOS drivers are licensed on hardware ID and go into trial mode (periodic beep) if no match is found. The driver for the Khadas and the Atom are different versions (2.x vs. 4.x) because Khadas would have to pay a new licensing fee to use the latest (not cost effective for them) and Atom is a more recent release. So, what happens if you plug them both in at the same time?

Well, the answer to that is interesting.

I uninstalled the 2.x driver for the Khadas before installing the JDS Atom. The 4.x XMOS driver that comes with the Atom refuses to install if the Khadas is connected, but once it is installed successfully (with Khadas disconnected), it will be picked up when the Khadas is plugged in and the 4.x driver will work with both DACs without dropping into trial mode. It seems to be happy to work with any DAC so long as one of the DACs present is licensed.

So, it occurred to me it would be nice to put the Khadas under the table and have it drive the desktop speakers directly, rather than have the desktop speakers come from the line-out of the JDS Atom amp (one less power switch and volume control in the chain, would be able to keep the headphone DAC/amp stack powered down and dust covered when not in use).

Then, it should be straightforward to configure zones in JRiver to select between speakers and headphones and have them preset with different EQ settings, DSP, etc.

But then I struck a problem...

PROBLEM

When there are two XMOS DACs available on the system, JRiver recognizes both and provides options for WASAPI, Kernel, DirectSound access for each.

However, it only presents an ASIO option for JDS Atom and not the Khadas.

But when you select JDS Atom ASIO, the sound is played back through the Khadas instead.

Not sure if this is a JRiver problem or a limitation with ASIO, but it seems that having multiple XMOS output devices on a single system is not necessarily a fringe scenario in principle.

Admittedly, there are arrangements I have not yet tried, like what happens if you install Khadas first with its 2.x driver and then install the Atom with its 4.x driver. The reason why I tried it the way I did was because I was not sure that two different versions of the same driver could co-exist on the same system and be attached to different devices.

[GoodEnoughGear]

I just ran into the same sort of issue testing two Seekris DACS that use the same Soekris ASIO Driver. I have to use the Soekris ASIO control panel to select which is the active DAC, so I can only output to one at a time. I imagine your ASIO driver is the same.