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[Chilli]

Greetings everyone,

i recently purchased JRiver MC20 and finally had time to set everything up yesterday. So far i am very pleased by its functionality, but right now i am unsure if i did everything right regarding "bit perfect" playback.

My Setup:

Win7 HTPC -> NAD 1050 DAC -> Amp

First of all i installed the ASIO Driver provided by NAD and right after that JRiver MC20.

I followed the JRiver wiki when it comes to settings in MC20 and i believe those are correct and chose the asio Driver for my dac as output device.

Only thing worth mentioning might be this:

i don't get the following options when selecting the asio Driver under MC20

Open device for exclusive access: Checked
Disable event style: Unchecked (may need to enable this on some older devices if you have problems)
Maximize device volume during playback: Unchecked

i only get these when selecting WASAPI but since this does not solve my Problem anyway i guess it is not relevant.


Finally i checked the dac properties under windows and they seem to be fine too. Exclusive mode and priority are activated as it should be. 

Standard output device under Windows is MC20 which is because of the newly added WDM if i am not mistaken.

What made me believe that i actually did something wrong is the following: When i switch to my dac as standard output device under windows i can still change the volume with the slider while playing music with MC20.

This is happening regardless if i choose ASIO or WASAPI in MC20.

Shouldn't this be impossible since with bit perfect setup the goal is to avoid windows own sound engine completely or am i missing something here and it is working correctly?

Thank you for reading and with kind regards

Chilli

[6233638]

If you are outputting ASIO, it should be bit-perfect.
The options you mention only apply to WASAPI.
 
It's up to the driver whether Windows' volume control works. Media Center should set it to 100% when starting playback to ensure that playback is bit-perfect.

[Chilli]

Thank you very much for your answer, in this case everything works as it is supposed to do 

Kind regards

Chilli

[ken-tajalli]

bit-perfect is a little over rated!
For as long as the bits are not going through windows (ASIO is fine) - bit perfect does not achieve much, unless your DAC is super fussy.
The DSP in MC20 works wonderfully, it does not spoil the sound and by its nature it is not bit-perfect, but I don't care! I loose no resolution or sleep.
Unless your DAC (or system) has a top quality analogue volume control, the digital volume control inside MC20 is second best - yet again it defeats bit-perfectness.
In my thirty odd years of HIFI game ( from early Meridian/Linn days) I have not come across a more transparent system than my current setup, which does give me all the signal processing I need and more.
Trust your ears, forget about the bit-perfect indicator on your machine.