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[raduschka]

Hi folks, this has been driving me crazy ever since I purchased an Yggdrasil dac, which clicks upon bitdepth/sampling rate change. I am using jriver30, 64b on win11 for the renderer and same version on win10 for the server, located in another room. There is a Gustard U18 DCC between my PC and the Dac. The problem starts after over an hour of perfect playback, i have not been able to draw any conclusion about what triggers it. Here is a typical situation: I begin playback of an album, it runs smoothly for an hour or more and then, click, in the middle of a track (this seems to coincide with a surge in CPU usage for the jriver process, from 4% to 30% or so, half of the time). If i time the undesirable clicks, they seem to occur every 53 -54 seconds with 96khz files. (I measured 56 seconds for 96khz, 26s for 192khz, over 150s for 44khz)
Same problem using both wasapi, asio or streaming kernel outputs (or even Foobar2000 )
Problem occurs whether over wifi or just playng back flac from an attached external drive.
I tried an audiophilleo ddc instead of the Gustard and the problem did NOT occur. I believe I can assume that this is a Windows or a Gustard problem?? Could it be CPU perfromance related?

[raduschka]

anyone?

[JimH]

No idea.  Start reducing complexity to see if you can eliminate the problem, then add back one step at a time.

You could start here:

Gustard U18 DCC

[Awesome Donkey]

I thought Schiit made and sold the Yggdrasil, not Gustard? Regardless, since it happens with WASAPI, ASIO and even with foobar2000 maybe you should contact whoever manufactured the DAC and see what they say? My guess since it happens with Wi-Fi or an attached external drive is some sort of speed bottleneck, whether it be Wi-Fi speed being too slow or some sort of I/O bottleneck with the external drive.

Otherwise, it's going to be hard to say or suggest anything.

[raduschka]

Hello and thank you both,

Schiit's answer was evasive and I understand why, it looked pretty complicated. Meanwhile I switched computers and the problem disappeared in the form I described. However this morning there was another random click from the dac and it coincided with a spike in cpu activity that looks like a distorted sinewave, so my guess is that these fanless 1.5Ghz -2Ghz computers are overwhelmed and cut the stream to the dac. The only course of action i can think of right now is:

1.optimize the pc for playback
(set real time priority to jriver.exe and
clean up windows and terminate permanently all unnecessary processes)


2.get a more powerful computer :-)

Is there anything else I can do?

[Awesome Donkey]

Maybe it's a spike in DPC latency?

https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/solving-dpc-latency-issues/
https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

clean up windows and terminate permanently all unnecessary processes)

Definitely would not recommend "cleaning" up Windows and terminating unnecessary processes, so this is a bad idea. The second you start doing stuff like that and tweaking things like tweak apps, disabling services, running PowerShell debloat scripts, etc., you'll end up breaking the OS and making things worse in the long term. Best to leave it as-is.

What is the specs of the PC you're using that's having issues?

[JimH]

The Weird Problems thread in my signature might give you some ideas.

[raduschka]

thank you again,
'cleaning up windows'... I would rather not do that if I can avoid it, absolutely.
I think latency is probably the lead to follow, I will read the article and try latemon on the computer, this evening if my kids don't have other plans :-)

My two small PC's are based on N5105 and J3455 CPU's, clocking at 2Ghz (2.9max)  and 1.5Ghz ( 2.3 max) respectively. 8 Gb RAM both, 4 cores.
I thought and read that those specs were more than enough for music playback. But I,m starting to doubt it, in light of the situation. I never encountered this problem on my surface pro tablet (i5) or another athlon AMD 2.8Ghz pc I have used. Unfortunately i cannot use any of those two, for various reasons.

Thank you very much for helping me out with this.

[raduschka]

thank you JimH, i will look at that tonight

[raduschka]

a quick reply, latency monitor says that the slower of the two PC's is not suitable for playback, I may have cpu throttling issues and I should disable that in the BIOS. A BIOS update is also suggested.
I will deal with it later today

[raduschka]

Hi,

i am truly at my wit's end. I ran latencymon extensively and after a few minutes the text turns red and says i may have problems with music playback etc. and that the cpu might be throttled, to look at the bios settings etc. The bars are in the low reds and the processes that induce latency seem to be core windows processes. I wrote them down somewhere, i can't recall which ones they are. Tcpip,  digital bus, classpnp.sys etc. i can retrace that info.
JRiver seems to be the program that causes the most hard pagefaults.
Chasing the problem is a drag, as it only starts after around an hour of normal playback.
Once  dropouts started (triggering relay clicks) i looked attentively at latencymon to see if any new processes would be identified, that would perhaps coincide with the clicks. No such thing. i could not detect any spike in cpu activity either. Or in jriver.exe's use of ressources.
What i also tried was disabling all energy saving settings in the Bios, in as much as i could understand what they were (a lot of googling).
I read 100% of the weird and wonderful issues that Jim mentioned. Interesting read :-)
Now what??

[JimH]

How about the Windows Power settings?

[raduschka]

performance plan, min cpu 100%, max cpu 100% and everything else performance oriented.

I am reinstalling win11 from scratch. I noticed regedit was locked, for no apparent reason.
I noticed that even though jriver was playing in wasapi mode, windows still managed to output sound through to my dac and speakers. It was the ergonomy options, narrator etc.
I thought that was weird, usually jriver blocks out any other sound from windows, right?

I will also try win10, if all else fails.
Thank you again

[raduschka]

This morning I performed a clean install of win10 64b.
Installed jriver 30 only and the wlan driver+graphic driver.
Clicks started as usual, around the 60 min mark. at 130sec intervals on 44khz flac file.
I am now going to use my i5 surface tablet to make sure it doesn't happen on that one too.

[DJLegba]

I tried an audiophilleo ddc instead of the Gustard and the problem did NOT occur.

And now you've tried several different computers and Windows setups. Seems like the Gustard is the problem.

[raduschka]

i am checking as we speak that my i5 tablet does not trigger the clicks. As for the Gustard being the problem, i must sadly agree....  The Gustard in combination perhaps with something present in those two computers. I am unable to say what. Everything functions perfectly with a usb cable directly to the dac, bypassing the Gustard. But The Gustard does improve the sound considerably.
Gustard have been wishy washy with support.
Not you!

[AGAWA]

one more device - more problems. what is a purpuse of sticking something between PC and DAC? Keep it simple.

[raduschka]

It works perfectly with my tablet.
I would gladly apply the minimalist strategy everywhere, including here, but as much as i resent it, the Schiit yggdrasil,s unison usb port does not produce the same sound as the gustard
How I wish it did,