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clicks right before start of new track from .ISO (SACD)

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AGAWA:
As in subject.
I get  click just before new track starts. It occurs when playing directly form .ISO (rip from SACD).
FLAC MCH files play with no click at all. (just tested 6ch Abbey Road)
It's particularly annoying on classical music.

Awesome Donkey:
Does it happen with sequential tracks, or when playing tracks from different albums, or when playing DSD after immediately playing PCM? Or all the time regardless?

If you hear the click when playing DSD immediately after playing PCM, that's probably from the DAC. It's a known quirk with some/most DACs that happen when switching from PCM to DSD or DSD to PCM. It can even happen if you're switching sample rates on PCM with some DACs. In addition if you're converting DSD to PCM (or PCM to DSD), you'll likely notice issues like this as well. If it's happening all the time, even with sequential tracks, that *shouldn't* happen so if that's the case you might need to describe your setup and settings with as much detail as possible.

Now, if you're DSD bitstreaming, sequential tracks *should* play fine without a pop/click. But if you're using DSP Studio > Output Format and have Output Encoding set to DSD, you're converting everything to DSD and you will hear clicks/pops when doing this.

AGAWA:
I have longer experience playing music files through Apogee Duet with Macbook and I'm familiar with all sort of situations when click can be expected.

Macbook Pro Catalina (latest)
JRiver MC 26 Mac
Apogee Duet : used in two configs, 2ch and 4ch (I use 4 speaker setup)
Core Audio - no changes to default
Bitstreaming - none (has to be set like this, setting bitstreaming to DSD gives funny noise)
DSP - set accordingly to 2 ch or mch.

In this particular case I played ISO  (rip from SACD) - 2 ch Bach Piano Concertos vol.2 , Sony. This is 2ch only SACD.
So DSP set to2 speakers, 2 ch, no SUB. No downmixing, but this is not relevant here.
Right before each track there is a click, album played as a whole, full playing list of all tracks.

I did not hear any clicks while testing MC , on different formats, and I was surprised to find them on SACD ISO.

Immediately after I went to play BR rip of Abbey Road (full sequence) and no clicks whatsoever.

Just checked in MC27 on Windows, through headphones directly from Windows audio, same thing, clicks just before start of  the track.

Awesome Donkey:

--- Quote from: AGAWA on March 31, 2021, 03:28:05 am ---Bitstreaming - none (has to be set like this, setting bitstreaming to DSD gives funny noise)
DSP - set accordingly to 2 ch or mch.
--- End quote ---

This is probably why you're getting pops and clicks. Because the Apogee Duet doesn't support DSD playback at all (so DSD bitstreaming isn't possible) MC has to convert DSD to PCM, which is a lossy conversion, to playback the SACD ISOs. There's a known quirk that when doing DSD to PCM conversions in MC that pops/clicks are usually introduced. For example with my Topping D50s, if I set MC to convert DSD to PCM instead of using DSD bitstreaming, there's always a pop/click at the beginning of each track. And with certain content (like the two Pink Floyd SACD rips) this can be jarring where the audio tracks are supposed to seamlessly segue with each other.

Now this could be argued whether or not this is a bug in MC as there is also a longstanding issue in MC where pops/clicks are introduced at the beginning of tracks when using MC to convert either tracks from a SACD ISO or PCM to DSF files (that also resembles an old issue in sacd_extract where the very same thing would happen) whereas converting to DFF files doesn't result in pops/clicks at the beginning of tracks.

Some things you might try are pre-converting your SACD ISOs to separate FLAC files but you may still encounter the issue. You could also try using an app outside of MC, like dbPoweramp, to convert SACD/DSD files to FLAC files and see if the pops/clicks are still present. If they are, maybe it's an issue with the SACD ISOs? Nonetheless, if you had a DSD-capable DAC and could use DSD bitstreaming, you probably wouldn't have this issue at all.

AGAWA:
but what will you say about MC27 in Windows doing the same thing? I'm not using external DAC.
Just plain Windows.
I will later check playback of DSF album and report.

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