Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bannonb]

Hey all:

I just evaluated and bought JRiver MC17.  Works fine, lasts a long time.

I acquired MC17 in addition to some new Audioengine 5+ speakers and Audioengine D1 USB DAC.  Now I can buy 24bit digital music files and enjoy them on my Win 7 PC.

Win7 is configured with the USB DAC set at 24bit, 96000hz.  MC17 is set for WASAPI exclusive and buffering of .5 seconds.  All buffer flush options are selected.  In DSP, output format:  Input sample rate set to same as output (no change) except if greater than 96khz (my DAC is limited to that).  Bit depth is set to 24 and channels=Source channels.

I am having problems picking the appropriate audio output mode that works with FLAC, m4a, mp3 music files of various bit rate and depth AND video files (AVI, WMV, MP4, etc).
 
After reading, it appears that modes that support directly talking to the USB DAC are desirable...WASAPI is recommended as the Windows 7 preferred, and WASAPI Event Style and ASIO to follow.  Kernel Streaming and Direct appear to be less desirable.

I find that WASAPI exclusive works great for music but makes video files unwatchable because the sound is echoing and restarting...

So I went to WASAPI Event style.  Videos all play great, but the music has some detectable areas that aren't exactly pops, but digital artifacts that interrupt the sound quality from time to time.

I prefer not to find, install and maintain ASIO drivers (and I've heard that with WASAPI it shouldn't be necessary).

I can use the direct sound mode and  both audio and video will play, but  I don't want to short change my audio experience though by adding the Windows mixer into the path.  I can use Picasa for videos I guess, but MC should be able to handle both.  

Where am I going wrong?

BannonB

[JimH]

The popping is not normal.  Try sending everything in 44.1 / 16, just as a test.

[bannonb]

I entered the DSP screen and set everything to 44.1khz and bit depth to 16 and got the same results of slight garbled audio during WASAPI Event output mode to my usb DAC.

I also toyed with WASAPI exclusive mode with one of many videos and changed the output format characteristics to 16/44.1...got the echo problem consistently.

[Matt]

Make sure you select the correct number of channels in DSP Studio > Output Format > Channels.  Leave JRSS up/down mixing enabled.

Otherwise when you play a video, which is often 5.1, you may get unexpected results like the driver mixing in extra channels with an echo, etc.

[bannonb]

I just enabled the Channels and JRSS mixing and get the same result.

New observations:
-some of the videos are 16 bit and some are 32 bit.

When I use source bit depth, the 32 bit videos fail and the 16 bit videos have audio skips or artifacts.

When I use 24 bit, upsampling of the 16 bit videos appears to be causing the garbling of both audio and video.

This seems to be consistent across WASAPI and WASAPI Event Style.

I can use Wave with the wave mapper and all music and 16 and 32 bit videos play at source bit depth and sample rates.

I was hoping to get WASAPI working as it seems to be the preferred approach for direct audio using a USB DAC with Win 7.

Any further pointers are appreciated.

BannonB

[bannonb]

Thanks for all the input.

I believe I have found that sweet spot where my audio files and video files will play properly.

I found WASAPI Event Style to be a little more accomodating (than WASAPI Exclusive) for the varied file types (bit depths, bit rates, etc).  It was just closer to working so I started there.

The Audioengine site suggested smallest buffer possible (counterintuitive and opposite of what I was doing with larger buffer sizes).  I did that with no luck (minimum hw size), but I experimented with a couple of other buffer settings and finally found the following to work for me:

Audioengine D1 USB DAC, Audioengine 5+ speakers, cheap subwoofer (soon to be upgraded)
Win 7 64bit laptop
Playing songs from RAM


Output mode:  WASAPI Event Style
Output settings:  Open for Exclusive access, HW buffer size 25 ms
DSP settings:  Sample rate-no change for all levels up to 96Khz (DAC limit), bit depth 24 bit, channels: source

If anyone else runs into this, pleas try the above.  Docs are limited with this DAC as it's supposed fairly plug and play.

BannonB